


Blessed

by strawberrymilano



Series: a blessing and a curse [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Daryl, BAMF Rick, Blood and Gore, Crazy Rick, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Magic, Magic isn't known, Mental Health Issues, Psychological Trauma, Schizophrenia, Survival, Therapy, Tiny!Daryl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrymilano/pseuds/strawberrymilano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3628572/chapters/8012796">Cursed</a> - Rick's point of view. </p><p>Rick sees stuff. Thangs. Turns out, in the end, some of those thangs turn out to be real. Like the man who shows up in his house, small enough to fit in the palm of Rick's hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fthinóporo (autumn)

It starts years ago, when Rick’s a little kid. He doesn’t realize anything’s the matter with him, at first, doesn’t realize he sees and hears things other people don’t, sometimes. It’s little things, like a flutter of fabric in the corner of his eye, or a voice echoing down an empty hallway, or a reflection of a sad-looking man in glasses in the superstore window. Sometimes he gets irrational ideas in his head, paranoia, that someone or something is following him. Nobody ever is, at least, nobody anybody else can see.

He’s not even six years old when something happens that he can’t ignore.

It’s a Sunday, at around ten in the morning, and Rick is at church with his family. His mother is looking straight ahead at the priest, tight-lipped, and his father’s eyes are dull and tired. Rick’s uncomfortable in his Sunday best, and shifts his weight from side to side in his tight shiny shoes.

He blinks, and there’s a kid standing behind the preaching reverend, stark naked and covered in blood.

Rick chokes, and stumbles half a step back.

His mother turns her tight-lipped face towards him, and her eyes are cold. Rick knows he’s supposed to behave in public, especially in church, and he swallows. He stands straight up again, and tries to pretend like he’s unruffled. Like he doesn’t see a thing out of the ordinary.

The kid looks a little younger than Rick, and is following the reverend with his beady eyes. He’s missing an ear, and there’s a horrible gash going up his face and through his thin hair. Rick thinks the look in his eyes is the scariest thing he’s ever seen, and ever will see.

(It won’t be.)

Then there’s a shatter of glass, and the lightbulb over the reverend’s head bursts and rains down sparks on him.

The reverend screams and beats at his black clothes until the nasty white flames go out, and the whole church surges into an uproar of noise and movement.

The kid is gone.

Everyone is moving and shouting and Rick’s mother bends down and says, “Everything’s all right, dear, it was just a burnt-out bulb,” when Rick’s face goes deathly pale and his knees give out. But Rick knows it’s not all right. Something’s not all right. Because that kid just disappeared, and nobody else saw him try to kill the reverend.

He tries to tell his mother what he saw, but she says for him to stop saying these awful things, to stop making things up. To stop telling tales. She says it’s a sin to say things like that, just for fun. Rick bites his lip and stops saying anything about it at all.

Months later, Rick puts it out of his mind, almost believing he really was making things up, and his young brain forgets the pure hatred in the kid’s eyes as he glared up at the reverend.

(Later, much later, the police dig up a small bloodied body on the outskirts of town. Rick doesn’t see the reverend ever again, after that.)

Years go by, and Rick grows up, and little things keep happening that he brushes aside. Voices speaking to him when nobody’s around, speaking to each other. Fits of paranoia about whether or not the people around him are real or not. Whether or not _he’s_ real. And sometimes Rick’s distracted between the real people around him and the unreal. Sometimes, when he’s dreaming, he can’t tell which is which, no matter how hard he tries.

He meets Shane in grade school, and they play together all the time. Rick’s mom likes Shane, and says “Sure, go on and play with that nice young boy next door,” when he asks, which always makes him smile. Sometimes Rick will ask Shane if he hears that voice, or sees that person, and Shane will look at him funny, and Rick will know the voice is unreal. Sometimes Shane will nod, and say the teacher is calling them back to class, or that’s his mother’s friend waving at them, and he doesn’t ever ask Rick for an explanation.

Rick is so grateful for that, he could cry.

(Sometimes, in the dark of the night, he does.)

He gets better at telling real and unreal apart. He asks Shane about the voices or about the people he sees less and less, and instead of tensing up Shane seems to settle a little in the times when Rick pauses and stops talking every once in awhile. When he stops to figure out if something is real or unreal.

As they get older, Shane doesn’t seem to even remember that Rick used to ask him these odd, out of the blue things, and it feels weirdly enough like Rick is getting away with it, and Rick thinks, _good_.

(It isn’t.)

In high school gym class, where the teacher Mr. Shenly is sharp and just a little too loud, Rick is convinced there’s something stuck in the padlocked storage building that’s right by the track field.

The chains keep shivering, like they want Rick to break them apart. It’s not rational, Rick knows it isn’t, but week after week of gym class wears him down until he’s out by the track field after school with a stolen set of bolt cutters in his hands.

“What the hell are you doin’, Grimes?” Mr. Shenly spits out venomously from behind him. Rick freezes where he stands, fingers going white on the bolt cutter handles.

“Nothing,” he says unconvincingly, and ends up in detention. Shane smirks at him in the hallway when he tells him, and claps Rick on the shoulder.

“Detention, without me? I’m hurt,” he says, and that’s that. No more questions asked, except for how pissed off Mr. Shenly was when he caught him.

(The answer is that he was more livid than Rick would like to admit. He still has the bruise where Mr. Shenly hit him.)

His parents are both shocked and disappointed in him, for even thinking of doing something like breaking and entering to steal school property. He gets grounded for a month, and has to formally apologize to the principal and Mr. Shenly before he’s allowed to hang out with Shane again. Then it’s over, and his parents relent. Let things go back to the way they were before.

(But it’s not really over. Every gym class, Rick has to grind his teeth together to ignore the chains, because even after all that, he swears he can still see them vibrating. It’s like an icepick embedded in his brain, just sitting there across the field.)

They graduate, and Rick’s parents give him a congratulatory gift - they let him choose a car for himself, and pay the downpayment for him. Rick is ecstatic, and shows Shane right away, who whoops and hollers like it’s a Mercedes Benz instead of an old Ford. They go for a drive, and end up at a diner where there’s a group of pretty girls.

That’s where Rick meets Lori, over milkshakes and burgers. She’s beautiful, and Rick can’t believe she’s real until Shane elbows him and says, “She’s lookin’ at you, Ricky! Go get ‘er!”

He goes, and, it turns out, lucky for him, that Lori wants to be gotten.

(Maybe, he'll think later, it wasn't so lucky.)

They get married three years later, after Rick’s gone through police training with Shane and started work as a beat cop on the streets where he grew up. Sometimes Rick needs to sort out real and unreal on the streets, seeing odd little flashes of unreal every so often, but none of that ever interferes with the job. He's good at it, almost too good, according to the chief, and he gets promoted to deputy faster than anyone else when he busts open a murder case that'd gone cold.

(If that has something to do with accidentally touching the murder weapon and seeing, feeling what had happened, well. Rick doesn't mix anything unreal with his duties as a sheriff's deputy. That would be unprofessional.)

One perp, one that was trying to escape from custody, Rick could swear he had a tail. It was long and covered in fur, like something you'd see on a shaggy dog. He'd looked it up, afterwards, and concluded it was unreal because it wasn't mentioned once in the perp’s extensive file, not even once. And something like that, well. Police officers in Rick’s county are nothing if not thorough in their reports.

He tucks it away and forgets, just like he does with all the other unreal things.

(In some dark, deep corner of his mind, Rick never really forgets all the unreal things he sees. He just tries to.)

He goes to the perp’s trial to testify, and ignores the tail like it isn't even there when he sees it again. The tail twitches whenever the perp snarls at him, and Rick steadfastly ignores the movement to focus on his face instead.

(He watches footage of the trial later, and there's no tail at all.)

He throws himself more and more into his work, after that. Comes home late, apologizes and makes it up to Lori. He sees more and more things all the time, now, because he’s gotten pretty damn good at figuring out whether something is real or unreal, and even though he brushes it off well enough so that nobody notices him acting off, it takes a toll. He's tired of playing real or unreal when he's off the clock, and starts clamming up when he gets home. He doesn't want to have to keep up a lie when he's at home with Lori, so he just doesn't say much at all.

The older he gets, the more Rick starts to think he's off-the-wall crazy.

(He is. But not as much as he thinks.)

Then Carl’s born, and suddenly, Rick doesn't care. He's filled with some newfound fatherly energy, and does the best he can to juggle staying at home with the wife and kid and going to work. His chief tells him he can take some vacation time, decompress and spend some real family time together, so he does. Lori’s happier than she's been in months, and Carl is a tiny delight with his chubby fingers and bright blue eyes.

He’s on cloud nine, those couple of weeks, and thinks, _maybe this could really work_.

(He should’ve known it wouldn’t last.)

Carl grows up, year by year, and, unfortunately, that fatherly energy that he’d had slowly wears down. Rick’s back to clamming up again, especially around Lori, who he swears can sometimes see right through him, and she gets more and more angry whenever he comes home. Explodes over the littlest things, trying to get a reaction from him.

He talks her down every time, does his calm cop routine. Uses short sentences and cool composure to get Lori’s hackles down and her discomfort tucked back away.

(He’s almost starting to think of his relationship with Lori like it’s a job. One that he’s almost tired of working.)

Carl’s the exception. Everything about Carl - his schoolwork, his friends, his sports games, all of those things - are things Rick’s glad to have been allowed a front-row seat to watch unfold. He goes to all of Carl’s baseball games, helps him with his homework, and encourages Carl to have more friends over at the house. He loves Carl, more than he’s ever loved anything, and it gets him through the days when he’s biting back the truth from Lori and seeing things he can’t explain.

(Getting through those days, though, isn’t enough, after awhile.)

One day Rick wakes up, thinking it’ll be like any other day, smiles at Carl over the breakfast table, ignores the look on Lori’s face, and goes to work.

(When he gets back home, though, nothing will ever be the same.)

Shane is a little weird that day. He doesn’t crack too many jokes, and when he does, they mostly fall flat. Rick notices him looking out of the corner of his eye, but whenever he turns to meet his eyes, Shane flicks his eyes away and down. Rick frowns, because he’s seen that look before, and it’s always been on the faces of guilty perps who know they’re caught.

He doesn’t realize how apt that analogy is until later, when he’s clamped his mouth shut tighter than a lockbox, standing in the frame of the kitchen door with his hands fisted at his sides, with Lori screaming at him, beating at him with every word, trying to hurt, trying to break, trying to see something, anything, come out of him.

Turns out, for almost a year now, Lori has been sleeping with Shane. And she’s pregnant, with Shane’s baby.

Now that he knows it’s real, Rick remembers all the little things he’d filed away before. Clues. Hints. Buildups. Thrown out pregnancy tests. The things he’d assumed were unreal, because no way in hell would it make sense in this life that his wife would cheat on him.

(Turns out, there’s more things on that list than he can count.)

Rick moves out, and requests a new partner at work.

His eyes go cold whenever he looks at Shane, after that, and he can’t help but feel like Lori just tore apart two things: their marriage, and the only real friendship Rick has ever had.

(He’s way more concerned with the friendship than the marriage, and later he’ll realize that maybe something was wrong with that equation from the start.)

Carl is unsettled by all the fights, the explosions Lori subjects them all to, the cold silences Rick leaves behind him. He starts doing worse in school, stops bringing friends over, keeps getting hurt in baseball practice from what his coach says is not having his head in the game.

There’s an awkward parent-teacher meeting, where Carl sits in the middle, Rick sits on one side, and Lori and Shane sit on the other. It doesn’t go well.

(That’s an understatement.)

Carl tries a little harder from then on, does a little better. Shane is, apparently, coaching him in math and playing catch with him almost every day, according to Lori. Carl is improving, putting more effort into the whole school thing than he ever was before. When Rick asks him about it, Carl says it’s because he realized how much he wants to make it into a good college.

But it’s mostly because, Rick suspects, he never wants a repeat of that meeting.

(He’s not wrong.)

Lori speaks to him sometimes over the phone, now, to update him on Carl and the baby and to help figure out the ins and outs of the legal process for divorce, and it turns out she’s a lot happier these days. Rick tries to be happy for her, tries not to hate her for it, tries not to be jealous over the time she gets to spend with the new baby Judith he can’t help but love, because he feels like his life’s been ripped away from him.

(He doesn’t succeed.)

Then, one day, Rick gets shot in the line of duty.

It’s a painful bite to the chest, one that goes right between the gaps of his kevlar vest, and he goes down hard.

Shane is there, he remembers. It’d been most of the department on the scene, and Shane was there to yell at him to stay awake, to press his hands into the bullet wound to stave off the bleeding. He thinks he’s dying, and the look in his eyes is the most sad and desperate Rick’s ever seen.

(It’s then that Rick realizes that maybe, just maybe, he’s been in love with Shane Walsh since he was eight years old, and that’s one big reason why things have gone to shit.)

Carl comes to visit almost every day, with Lori and Shane awkwardly hanging behind him. Lori cries at his bedside when Carl’s not there, sometime near the end of Rick’s in-hospital rehab, apologizing, saying they need to be on good terms again, _please_ , Rick, please let us back in.

Rick’s tired. He’s just so tired.

So he says, “Okay.”

And Lori smiles.

It makes Rick’s head hurt.

That’s about the time when he starts seeing Lori everywhere he goes. In the reflection of the hospital windows, in the yard when he’s getting the mail from the mailbox. Even in the alleyways where he walks his beat, he sees her.

She’s in the white wedding dress she wore from what seems like a lifetime ago, and she’s absolutely beautiful. Her face is always smiling, always perfect, like her makeup’s been done by an artist like it was the day of their wedding, and her hair falls like currents in a river onto her shoulders.

Rick’s so tired. And Lori is so beautiful.

(Too beautiful.)

After weeks of seeing her in the corner of his eye, bright and sharp as a high definition TV, even when the real Lori is there right in front of him, Rick turns to look for his Lori in her wedding dress. Sometimes he even dreams of the look on that Lori’s face, the sweet, unworried tilt of her head. The carefree smile on her lips. It’s as if she’s everything he thought he wanted, promising everything he hadn’t gotten out of their marriage.

He starts trying to follow her.

He’s distracted and vaguely knows it, even at work, and he can’t stop staring at the glimpses he catches of this mysterious Lori. Rick doesn’t even take the time to catch up with Carl like he used to; he’s like a man obsessed. So of course his work performance suffers, of course his chief starts looking at him with new eyes. Of course Carl starts glaring at him when he sees him. Like he’s worth less than nothing.

Still, he can’t stop trying to follow her.

(If he’s honest with himself, he’s not trying very hard anymore. He’s just so _tired_.)

There’s a family picnic Lori has been planning for a month in the summertime. They sit outside on a lush green lawn on top of a blanket, and Lori hands out plates and good food. They eat, and the crickets chirp and the birds sing. It’s a lovely outing out by the forest. Judith is playing with her plastic cup, Carl is smiling, and Shane looks a little more comfortable with the situation than he’s been in a long time. Rick sits there, staring at the edge of the forest, because there she is, in her white wedding dress, smiling.

(The exact moment when the rest of Rick’s life falls apart is here.)

He stands on wobbly legs, and lumbers towards her, for her.

Lori snaps at him to get back here, what the hell is he doing, where is he going -

Rick ignores her.

(Well, ignores one of her.)

And nearly kills himself by falling straight off a cliff and into the water below, right into Lori’s cold arms.

(He's so tired, so tired, and just wants everything to stop.)

There’s a scream, as he falls, and he thinks he can hear Judith crying and Shane shouting. His vision goes black, and the last thing he sees before passing out is the wedding dress stained with his blood as Lori smiles down at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Poltergeist** : a type of ghost or other supernatural entity which is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. They are purportedly capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. Most accounts of poltergeists describe the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors.
> 
>  **White Lady** : a type of female ghost dressed in all white reportedly seen in rural areas and associated with some local legend of tragedy. White Lady legends are found in many countries around the world, and are most prominent in parts of Great Britain, Ireland and the United States. Common to many of them is the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband, boyfriend or fiancé.


	2. cheimónas (winter)

Rick wakes up with a pounding headache.

Lori is there, sitting to the side, but she’s not wearing white, and she isn’t smiling. In fact, she looks more tired than Rick’s ever seen her, and she’s not looking at him, she’s looking off to the side and bags are under her eyes.

“Carl,” she says, “Stop doing that.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Carl snaps back.

“You’re pacing,” Lori says. “Please, it’s making this more stressful for everyone.”

“Doesn’t even make sense,” Carl mutters belligerently. “Not doing anything.”

“Listen to your mother,” Rick says tiredly, sitting up and cradling his head.

Lori gasps, and Carl is frozen in front of his bed like a deer in the headlights.

“Dad,” Carl says like it’s an accusation.

“Carl,” Rick says back. “Y’all alright?”

“ _We’re_ fine. _You’re_ the one who’s not fine.”

“You’re in a hospital bed, for god’s sake, Rick!” Lori sounds stretched beyond her means. “You walked off a _cliff_! What were you thinking?”

Rick frowns. He remembers… Lori, wearing her wedding dress. He remembers falling into her arms. He opens his mouth, but -

He’d gotten caught up in following Lori in her wedding dress, had gotten carried away in the heat of the moment, almost to the point where he’d forgotten about the fact that she wasn’t actually Lori. He’d started seeing the other Lori, treating her, as if she were _real_.

And look how that turned out. Bleeding from the head, in the hospital.

(It never turns out well, when he does that.)

Rick shuts his mouth.

“What were you thinking, Rick? Why can’t you just tell me? You were just going to say something, Rick, I know you were!” Lori’s getting more and more worked up with every second of his silence. “Why can’t you tell me anything? Why do you always act so cold? All I’m asking is for you to tell me what’s _going on in your head_ \- ” Lori stands abruptly. “But I guess that’s too much to ask, isn’t it?”

Rick stares at her wordlessly.

“Even though I used to be _married_ to you, you almost _die_ , and you - you _still_ won’t - ” Tears build up in her eyes, and a hand comes up to cover her mouth. Lori leaves the room, and all that’s left is silence.

And Carl, whose eyes are sharp as daggers.

“What the hell, dad,” he says flatly, and follows her out.

Rick is so tired of having this same fight, over and over and over again. Different details and circumstances, but it really comes down to the same little things.

(He’s just so _tired_ , all the time. He just wants it all to _stop_.)

Shane comes in later, mouth curled in uncertainty and unhappiness. He’s alone, which surprises Rick.

“Where’s Carl and Lori?”

Shane shrugs. “Carl’s too angry, Lori’s taking care of Judith. They’re… strung out, after what happened.” Shane steps a little closer. “We almost lost you, Rick,” he says quietly.

Rick fiddles with his hospital blanket. “Sorry,” he mutters.

Shane sits down and crosses his arms. He sighs.

“You wanna tell me what the hell you were thinkin’, walkin’ off a cliff? I saw you do it, brother, I just need t’ know why.”

Rick bites his lip.

“C’mon, now, I know that look,” Shane says. “What’s goin’ on in that big brain of yers?”

Rick shakes his head with a frown. “Jesus, Shane, I - ”

“What?”

“I - I can’t tell you,” Rick confesses. “You’d - I can’t.”

“I’d what?”

Rick shakes his head vehemently. Helplessly. “Shane, you _know_ \- ”

“Don’t know _what’s_ goin’ on right now,” Shane says. “Doctors say you should be on suicide watch, Ricky. Suicide watch. That’s right. And we got half a mind to let ‘em, because we saw you just - just walk off a cliff, Rick. Saw you fall.” Shane shifts uncomfortably. “Didn’t think you were, y’know, anything like that, ever, til I saw you do that.”

“I’m _not_ \- ” Rick says, exasperated.

“Good to hear, Rick, but,” Shane hesitates, and his eyes flick down. “If we don’t know what you were thinkin’, then what else are we gonna assume, huh? What the hell else could you have even been thinkin’ of?”

It was - I was paying attention to something that was _unreal_ , Rick thinks desperately. I just _forgot it wasn’t real_ , I wasn’t paying attention - “I wasn’t - I just wasn’t paying attention, Shane - ”

“Bullshit, you walked in a straight line right over the edge, wasn’t anything to see but cliff-side going down into the forest - ”

“I _didn’t see the cliff_ , Shane,” Rick says. “Would you just _listen_ , I wasn’t - ”

“Maybe if you were sayin’ somethin’ that was explaining what you was actually thinkin’ about, ‘stead of all this _bullshit_ that’s got you evadin’ the question - ”

“I didn’t _see it_!” Rick explodes, fingernails cutting into the skin of his palms.

Shane stops.

(It’s the first time he’s ever seen Rick yell quite like that.)

Shane licks his lips, and chooses his next words carefully. “So… what _did_ you see, Rick?”

Rick closes his eyes and lays back in bed, and goes silent.

Shane waits.

(No one’s ever asked Rick directly about the unreal things he sees. It’s the first he’s ever thought of telling someone since he was six years old.)

Rick opens his eyes, and stares at the blank ceiling tiles.

“...I can’t tell you, Shane. You’d… I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” Shane asks softly, like he’s asking for a secret.

Just as quietly, like it’s being ripped out of him, Rick confesses, “I don’t know.”

(He’s never known.)

They do end up putting him on suicide watch. There’s a constant flow of people there to make sure he doesn’t off himself, which puts Rick on edge at all times. He knows they’re watching his every move, and it gets tiring, trying to pretend all the time. Kind of like how it was with Lori, if he’s honest. He’s been pretending so long, he’s tired of it.

But for some reason, maybe mostly out of habit, he keeps it up.

(He’s been doing it for his whole life, now, and it seems too much like giving up to stop now.)

When he’s been out of bed and out of any danger from his concussion, they send Rick to a therapist. To, Rick assumes, confess that he’s suicidal.

(Even if he was, Rick would be damned before he’d tell a therapist that. He’s been on the interrogator side of things too long to fall for their tricks now.)

“So, Rick,” the therapist, McAdams or something, says companionably.

(Rick hates him right away, just from the false good cop routine.)

“I’m not here to make friends,” Rick says a little harshly.

“Okay,” McAdams says peaceably. “What are you here for, then?”

“You know why.”

“I only know things I’ve been told about your recent behavior,” McAdams points out. “And nobody really knows exactly what’s going on in your head, except maybe you.”

So, gonna be difficult, then. “I’m here because I’m on suicide watch.”

“Are you suicidal?”

Rick glares at him. “No.”

“Okay.” McAdams tilts his head. “So, why are you on suicide watch?”

“Because,” Rick grits out, “People think I tried to kill myself.”

“Did you?”

“No!”

“Okay. Then why did they think that?”

“Because I fell off a cliff,” Rick explains in that tone he used to use to explain to Carl why birds fly, and why they aren’t there at their destination yet. _Which you already fucking know,_ he doesn’t say.

“Did you… trip?” McAdams leans forward in his chair, a little. A tell. “Were you walking backwards? How did you fall?”

“I… walked. Right on over.”

“Okay. Can you see why that would, objectively, be concerning to your family?”

Rick shrugs. “I was distracted.”

“Okay. Did you walk up to it not knowing that it was there?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t look down?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?” McAdams is looking at him intently. “What were you looking at that distracted you so much?”

Rick clamps his mouth shut. This guy is good, better than Rick thought he was. He led Rick right to the heart of the matter in less than a minute. It’d taken Shane much longer to get there.

“Rick?” McAdams prompts.

Rick doesn’t say anything.

McAdams sighs, and sits back. Stands up, and walks to the window.

“I’m going to tell you something, Rick,” he says. “And you have the right to know this. You don’t have to tell me anything you really don’t want to. But you should know, whatever is on your mind, whatever thoughts or things are happening that you can’t explain, whatever they are, you _can_ tell me. I won’t judge you - I’ve worked with murderers and rapists from the county prison, I’ve heard things no man should hear. And under client and doctor privilege, nothing you say can be disclosed to anyone without your express permission.”

McAdams turns to him with his hands tucked together behind his back. His eyes are kind, too kind for Rick to feel as defensive and prickly as he does. “Whether it’s something you’re ashamed of thinking, or whether it’s something you just don’t understand, or really even think on a normal basis, it’s okay. Thoughts are sometimes out of our control, and bounce from one thing to the next in ways that can surprise us. Especially if something terrifying or external is happening in our personal or professional lives that causes us undue stress. And it’s okay to have these thoughts, but sometimes they get out of control, and someone gets hurt. If you let me, maybe I could help you figure out where it went wrong, and stop it from happening again.

“So, Rick, I’ll ask you again, and you can choose whether or not you’re going to answer me today. What did you see, or what were you thinking about, that day on the cliff?”

Rick’s breath stops in his chest.

All this time, all these years, and nobody has - nobody has been as _safe_ as McAdams. He’s bound by law to silence, and he's heard it all. Nobody will know, just him and McAdams, and maybe -

Maybe it’s just that Rick is so _tired_ of keeping it a secret -

“I saw Lori,” he blurts out, and hell, he actually _said it_.

(Fuck, it’s like a load off his chest.)

“Your wife?”

“In her wedding dress. Standing by the edge of the forest.”

McAdams pauses. “Correct me if I’m wrong. Didn’t you just have a divorce?”

(Things spiral out of control a little, after that.)

McAdams suggests that Rick take a psychological evaluation that only he and another doctor, a diagnostician, will see. Rick agrees, because hell, he’s already come this far.

“But please, don’t lie on anything, no matter how crazy the questions seem. It will only hurt, instead of help.”

Rick sighs. Thinks about how if this gets out, he may never see Carl again. “Fine. But nobody, and I mean nobody, will know the results but you two.”

“Absolutely.”

He takes the damn test, full of multiple choice questions that ask him things like whether or not he likes social events, how he likes his job, whether or not he wants to kill himself. Whether or not he sees things other people don’t. How long he’s seen them.

He hesitates on that one, but reminds himself that he said he’d answer truthfully.

So he does.

(Mostly.)

Gets a pretty bad score, from McAdams’ facial expression.

“The diagnostician concluded that, based on the results, that you may have a high-functioning form of catatonic schizophrenia,” McAdams says somberly.

“What does that mean?” Rick asks.

“Symptoms of this disorder include hallucinations, recalcitrance, hearing things that aren’t there, deterioration of work performance. Your answers suggest that those symptoms apply to you; is that the case?”

“...Yes,” Rick admits.

“Okay.”

“So I’m crazy,” Rick concludes dully. Great. Something he’s always sort of known, thrown right back in his face, completely confirmed, and he’s unable to refute it.

He’s going to be deactivated from duty, he’s never going to see Carl again, won’t see him grow up -

“Now, this condition is treatable through medication and regular therapy,” McAdams continues. “Depending on your brain chemistry reacting well with different medications, it could take a while, but you could be back on your feet and better than ever in less than two years.”

Rick boggles. “Really? That fast?”

McAdams nods. “I’ve had patients that took so quickly to medication, they were fully functional and without any symptoms in under a year.”

Rick furrows his brow. “So… you’re saying… I wouldn’t see anything but what’s real.”

McAdams smiles. “That’s right.”

Rick narrows his eyes. He doesn’t really believe that it can be fixed, he’s lived with it all his life, but hell. Why not? “I’ll try.”

“Also think about telling your family,” McAdams suggests. “This is a difficult issue to work with, but if you explain it, they’ll understand you a little better and where you’re coming from.”

Rick hesitates. “I’ll… think about it,” he allows at last.

(It takes a few days, but he wears down enough to let it happen.)

McAdams gets him in a room with Carl, Shane, Lori, and has him talk about seeing Lori in her wedding dress, why he walked off that cliff.

He tells them about the little things, he tells them he’s been seeing weird things since he was a kid, and didn’t know anything but hiding it from everyone. He tells them how he’d started seeing Lori in her wedding dress, long hair and bright smile, and how he was inexplicably drawn to her the more he saw her.

The fact that he’s indisputably, clinically, absolutely a schizophrenic comes out, right in the open, and the blank shock fills the room with a tension, a supreme awkwardness, that you would not believe.

Lori cries.

Rick feels suddenly guilty even though he didn’t do anything wrong.

Lori screams at Rick for lying to her, lying to her for _years_ , Rick says this is why he never told her, because she’d rip his life apart, but oh wait, she did that already. Shane bursts out defensively, which has Rick seeing red, and Carl snaps at him, doesn’t call him dad, asks if he’s crazy too because fuck, Rick might’ve passed it down to him genetically, and Rick glares at McAdams for allowing this meeting to fucking happen in the first place.

Lori says he should get locked up in a psych ward until he’s better, and that pisses Rick the fuck off, so much so that he ends up yelling and storming out of McAdams’ office swearing that he’ll never fucking do this therapy thing ever again if this is what it’s going to be like.

(He knows he’s running scared, knows he’s running from conversations he’s been running from his whole life, and hates himself for it.)

Rick shuts himself in his hospital room, and hates that there isn’t a lock on the door.

He stews in there for a good hour, lying on his lumpy hospital bed and staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed like he’s a goddamn teenager, and tries not to think about the way Carl had looked at him like he hadn’t even known who he was. How Lori looked broken, and how Shane had looked betrayed.

He should have kept this to his goddamn self.

(Later, he’ll be so glad - so fucking glad - that he didn’t. But it’s a long, long time til he feels that way.)

There’s a sound at the door, and Rick looks to the side.

Carl is standing there, unsure of himself in the doorway, clenching and unclenching his hands. He’s looking down at the ground instead of in his eyes.

Rick sits up carefully, like Carl is gonna bolt if he doesn’t.

“Hey, dad,” Carl says quietly.

“Hey, Carl,” Rick says back.

“Sorry about - about what I said,” Carl says. “I didn’t mean it. I talked to - uh, the doctor in there, and he explained some things to me.”

Rick wonders which words he’s apologizing for. “McAdams.”

“Yeah, him. But dad,” Carl says, desperately. “Dad, you didn’t mean it when you said you weren’t going to go to therapy, did you?”

Rick’s quiet.

(He did mean it.)

“Because, look, dad. It’s - it’s important to me. That, y’know, you’re okay.” Carl looks at him beseechingly. “It’s important that you’re happy, and - healthy, or - with it, or whatever they call it.”

Rick’s eyes soften. “Carl.”

“No, dad, listen, okay. You might not want to do therapy because it’s - hard, y’know? I don’t really get it, but - but McAdams says he’s had hundreds of other patients with the same problems, and that it’s one of the hardest things they do in their lives, getting better. Some of them - ” Carl hesitates. “He said some of them don’t make it.” Carl sucks in a breath. “And - you gotta. You gotta make it, dad. You’ve gotta - tell the truth, take care of yourself, and work on getting better. You - you just gotta. I can’t watch something like you walking off another cliff again.”

Carl’s getting a little more heated now. “You hear me, dad? You’re not allowed to do that anymore. You have to work on getting better, and get somewhere, and be - happy, or - or I won’t talk to you again. _Ever_ again.”

Rick feels like the wind has been knocked out of him.

“Carl...”

“No,” Carl says, angry. “No, this is not a debate, this is an ultimatum, okay? Either you work on getting better, or I don’t talk to you ever again. Okay?”

Rick looks at him. His son.

“Okay, Carl,” he says quietly. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” Carl says, and quickly walks away, wiping his eyes with the back of his arm as he goes.

(Rick’s heart breaks at that - that he caused those tears, that he made Carl say something like that at such a young age. It’s a part of his heart that won’t ever be mended again.)

After that, talking a little more with McAdams, Rick decides to move far, far away from the city and get a specialized therapist to put him through an immersive therapeutic program. The sooner he improves, the better.

Lori and Shane help find a good one, a Doctor Greene, way out in King’s County, and Rick promises to take all his medications that are prescribed until further notice.

He hugs Carl goodbye, gives Lori and Shane and Judith a wave, and drives off down country roads he hasn’t seen in a long, long time. He used to live here, when he was a kid, and it sure hasn’t changed much.

He takes the medicine for the first time that night in a hotel, and doesn’t see anything unreal. He feels like maybe, just maybe, if he keeps this up, that in a year or so, he can get better enough to see Carl again, talk to him, face-to-face.

The day after, he goes to his new house, far removed from any humanity or civilization, and puts his two boxes of stuff down, and tries not to cry. He has a headache from the medication, one that the docs say will go down as his body gets used to it, and he’s so tired, and so lonely, and so broken. Rick tries not to cry.

(He fails.)


	3. protochroniá (new year's day)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well damn. This chapter turned out to be about 17,000 more words than I thought it'd be. Sorry for the long wait... if it makes you feel any better I suffered just about as much as you did lmao

Rick goes to the small-town pharmacy for the first time in the afternoon on a weekday, and waits in line with his prescription crinkled up in his fist. When he finally gets to the front of the line, the pharmacist does a double-take at whatever is scrawled on there, and looks at him with a little more interest.

(The handwriting was pretty bad, so Rick couldn’t really read it. He wonders if she’s stunned by the medication name or by the dose - he gets the feeling it could be either one.)

“Mr. Grimes?” she asks.

“That’s me.”

She bustles to the back and pulls out a finished paper bag, already stapled shut. She rings it up on the register. “Here’s enough to get you through a month. If you have any worrying symptoms, just give him a call.”

“Thanks.” Rick takes care of the co-pay with his card and grabs the bag off the counter.

He’s supposed to build up to four whole pills in the next couple months. He doesn’t know quite what that says about him to the pharmacist, but he’s sure she’s got some sort of idea of what’s going on. It makes him a little uncomfortable, that she knows even the slightest bit of the shit happening in Rick’s brain. He tries not to think about it.

He takes his pill that night. Downs a full glass of water with it, and wishes he could just fast-forward through the next couple years.

-

Shane calls.

“I need time,” Rick says, sitting in his empty kitchen and feeling like there’s a boulder crushing him right on the sternum. “I just - Shane - I need time. Can you give that to me? Please. It’s all I’m asking for.”

Shane pauses. “...Alright, Rick, I’ll give you time. Much as you need. Just… lemme call every once in awhile, make sure yer still alive.”

“Alright. Bye, Shane.”

“Bye.”

The phone clicks off and Rick keeps it up to his ear, listening to the dial tone, for a long time.

(He’s been doing that too often lately.)

He goes to therapy, he eats as little as he needs to, just enough to get by, and he sits in his sad excuse for a house. It’s small and broken down, like someone forgot about it for a long time and let it go to the dogs, and Rick feels like it fits him, right now, at this time of his life. Hershel - his therapist - says that that’s probably not good. Well, he would if Rick told him about it, anyway.

Yeah, he’s tight-lipped with Hershel. Their first meeting... didn’t go well.

“Rick Grimes?” Hershel had asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doctor McAdams told me about you,” Hershel had said. “Contacted me specifically. Well, I am a specialist in the worst cases, but still, it was rather rare.”

Rick had been quiet.

“So, from your chart, it appears as if you have a severe case of completely untreated schizophrenia,” he’d continued. “In fact, you may want to consider, if this doesn’t go well, hospitalization. It could be dangerous for those around you.”

“‘S why I left.”

Hershel had looked at him peculiarly. “Right. And it says here you - fell?”

Rick had ground his teeth, because he knew what came next. “Walked off a cliff.”

Hershel’s brow had furrowed, then, and Rick just knew he was going to say something that would piss him off.

(He wasn’t wrong.)

“And you still say you _aren’t_ suicidal?”

Ever since, Rick has kept his answers down to one sentence and, if he can swing it, monosyllables. Hershel looks at him oddly, sometimes, when he doesn’t think Rick is looking. Rick wonders if all this psycho bullshit is ever going to actually help fix him.

Another day, another goddamn week of sitting in his house staring at nothing, and Rick snaps.

“I’m gonna take a goddamn job,” he snarls at Hershel that week in his session. He’s pacing around the room, and is talking more than he has in weeks. “I’m gonna take a job, and yer gonna sign off on it.”

Hershel looks apprehensive. “Are you sure you - ”

“ _Yes_!”

Hershel looks at him thoughtfully. “What job?”

Rick throws up his hands. “Any job! I’m gonna talk to the local sheriff and get a transfer if I have to. Can’t take no more of this - sittin’ around.”

“Okay.”

“I’m too goddamn - ” Rick hears what Hershel says a beat too late, and stops abruptly.

“Okay,” Hershel repeats. “I’ll sign off on it.”

Rick stares at him, looking for any signs of deception and finding none. “Good.”

“I’ll contact Morgan for you, let him know you’re job-hunting. They’ve had a shortage down at the station anyway, I’m sure he’ll be glad to have you.”

(He is.)

Working at the station is like a breath of fresh air after all that downtime. Rick’s always been the workaholic type, and there’s comfort in falling back into that pattern. He fills out report after report, walks the beat, talks shit with Harrison and Martinez, and grows a healthy respect for Sheriff Morgan Jones.

“Rick Grimes, huh,” Morgan had said his first day, with his feet propped up on the edge of his desk. “Talked to your last Sheriff. Heard things about you.”

Rick had stiffened, but Morgan continued, “Apparently you’re the best damn thing since sliced bread. That true, Deputy?”

A smile broke out on Rick’s face at that, and he shook his head. “Couldn’t rightly say.”

“Hmm.” Morgan scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Well, glad to have someone ‘round here that won’t outright bullshit me. Y’know, Deputy, after being a Sheriff for seven years, my nose just got fed up. I’m pretty damn sure I’m actually allergic to bullshit.”

Rick full-out grinned. “I’ll be sure to keep the bullshit to a minimum, Sheriff.”

“See that you do, Deputy.” Morgan flicks his hand. “Dismissed.”

(He knows from that alone that he’s gonna like working for his new sheriff.)

It’s easy to fall into it, even after his months-long break. Five cases going on at once, manpower stretched to the limit, late nights and early mornings - it’s like a goddamn oasis in the desert. Instead of sitting around and falling into fits, Rick actually has purpose. He has people he likes, competent co-workers, and a new town to learn.

A week goes by like that, with Rick meeting all sorts of characters and running around filling out incident reports. Traffic collisions, graffiti reports, civil complaints, the works.

It’s… nice. Distracting.

-

Morgan is walking past Rick’s desk one day around two in the afternoon. Rick’s got his cold ham sandwich in his hands, with the rest of his sack lunch sitting on his paperwork.

Morgan stops dead, side-eyeing him. “...Rick.”

Rick frowns. “What?”

“You eat that shit every day?”

“Yeah.”

Morgan looks aghast.

“Stop. Just… stop. Don’t eat that, what the hell’re you doing.”

“Then what am I supposed to eat?” Rick asks.

Morgan grabs the sandwich out of his hands and throws it in the trash. “Anything but that. C’mon, Deputy, we’re going for a walk.”

He ends up taking Rick to lunch at T’s Diner. It’s only about a block away from the station, and is pretty stuffed full with what look like regular customers. Rick squeezes in a booth by the window. Morgan sits across from him and turns over their coffee cups.

“This is where we get our coffee and doughnuts, so be nice,” Morgan warns.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“What can I get fer y’all, Sheriff? Deputy?” the waitress asks with a smile. She pours coffee into their cups without even looking down, and doesn’t spill a drop.

“Maggie,” Morgan greets. “I’ll have the special.”

“One special, got it.”

That done, Maggie rounds on Rick with a gleam in her eye. “Now, let’s see. I don’t believe we’ve been properly acquainted. I’m Maggie, Maggie Greene. What’s yer name, stranger?”

Rick blinks up at her. “Name’s Rick Grimes,” he says. “‘M new in town.”

“Well, Officer Grimes, it’s sure nice t’ meet ya. What can I get you fer?”

He thinks fast. “I s’pose I’ll have the special.”

“All right. Two specials. I’ll get y’all’s orders right on in,” Maggie says with a wink, and flounces off to the kitchen.

“Seems nice,” Rick observes.

Morgan snorts into his coffee. “Yeah, _seems_. Isn’t so nice to that kid, what’s his name, ‘s had a crush on her forever. Martinez would know, he knows all the gossip going around town.”

Rick shrugs.

“Doesn’t matter. My point is, she’s real nice except to the boys she’s got her eyes on.”

Rick smiles and thinks of Lori back in high school. Now that he's thinking about it, he can see a similar set to their shoulders. “Yeah, I could see that.”

The food comes out steaming on plates Maggie is balancing on her tray. There’s country style steak, fried okra, cucumbers and onions, creamed potato with cheese melted inside, and a fat piece of cornbread. There’s even a soup, one that Maggie says is clam chowder.

Rick digs in. It’s the first hot food he’s had in ages, and _god_ , it’s good. Fresh, and right out of the kitchen. It doesn’t take too long for him to finish off the last crumb of food he’s got.

“Good, huh?” Morgan says, motioning at Rick’s cleared plate.

“Very.”

“Better not catch you eating cold sandwiches for lunch anymore, then. Maggie’d have your head if she found out. Or mine.”

Rick grins. “Thanks for the tip, Sheriff.”

Morgan grins back, and finishes his coffee. “That's why I get paid the big bucks, Deputy.”

-

Rick goes back there the next day.

And the next.

The fourth day, he has a feeling he’s already been dubbed a regular. Maggie sure seems to think so. She sits him at the same booth by the front window every time he comes in. He sort of likes being a regular. It’s easy, gets him great food fast.

(He doesn’t think about his lunches from before, the way he ate cold deli subs while going through parts of his paperwork, right at his desk, all alone. Doesn’t think about how he’s a little less lonely when he’s sitting there in his booth, listening to the slight sounds of people moving, talking, eating, laughing.)

(Doesn’t thank Morgan, either, but he's pretty sure Morgan’d roll his eyes at him if he did.)

-

Rick swings the car door shut and makes for the house. He tosses his utility belt and badge down in their usual spot in the front hall and takes a seat on the ratty old couch in his living room, flipping through channels on the TV until he hits some national news program.

There’s a six-pack of beer in his fridge. Before all this, on a regular day back in Atlanta, he’d grab one. Now, though, he’s not supposed to have alcohol. It’d mess up his brain chemistry or something. Make it harder to function and worse to tell what’s affecting his mood more - the beer or the drugs.

See, in the few months since he started, Rick’s gone from one pill of anti-psychotics to two. The docs had said that it was important to stagger it to adjust to the side effects, so here he is, staggering it.

So far with this upped dose, there’s been a little nausea and dry mouth. The headaches have been back, but he knows those’ll go down soon, and they’re not bad enough to affect anything. He’s even vomited a few times. Those are the only reactions he can tell for sure.

But restlessness?

Rick’s not sure if it’s the medicine or just him, sitting around his house all alone for miles after his work shift’s over. Waiting for something, anything, to happen. For him to be able to do something. Fix something.

Drowsiness?

He’s been bone-tired since - well, since the divorce started. Has it made it worse, taking the meds? He can’t tell. It’s all just slogging through the day to him.

Rick wonders if the medicine is even helping at all. Besides those side effects, nothing else has really changed all that much. Yeah, he hasn’t seen anything unreal lately, but he didn’t see unreal stuff all that regularly before, anyway. Every once in awhile, maybe.

(A traitorous part of him thinks that maybe he saw unreal things way more often than he realized.)

Rick shudders, and tries to focus on the news. Upstate, there’s some bad rain and a little flooding. A few towns over, a lady’s gone missing. Here in town, a whole batch of steaming bread’s been recently donated to the shelter.

There’s a voicemail message on his cell phone. It’s been there almost all day; his pocket’d buzzed when he was at work and he couldn’t pick up.

The caller ID says _Lori_.

The message is only a minute long. He still hasn’t listened to it.

(He can’t, yet.)

He pockets his phone again and heads to the kitchen. He’ll heat something up for dinner, one of those frozen meals. Then, well… after, he’ll listen to Lori’s voicemail.

The news keeps going in the background as he heats up some canned soup in the microwave. It’s just garbled sounds, from here. It’s sort of calming, like someone’s close by, talking. Shooting the shit.

There’s a wet spot on the counter, near the sink. Rick frowns, and grabs a paper towel to wipe it up. He hopes there isn’t a leak in the faucet.

The microwave beeps. Soup’s done.

Rick tosses the paper towel, grabs a spoon, and sits at the table. He eats, one bite at a time.

He washes up his dishes, afterward. Turns off the TV and heads upstairs. Lies on the mattress that’s spread across the floor, and stares at the ceiling.

Here’s what the message says.

“Rick, it’s me.” There’s a pause. “There’s a package in the mail for you. Sent it out today, should get there soon. Carl and Judith helped put it together. It’s - got things in it, for you. From them.” _And from us_ , she doesn’t say. “You don’t have to sign for it, I made sure of that. And there’s a couple pictures in there, of Carl and Judy.” She pauses again. “Call whenever you need to. Or - or want to. Judy’d love to hear from you. Carl too.”

The message ends there, after a few seconds of silence, like Lori had so much more to say but didn’t know how to say it.

Rick lays there awhile longer, staring at that same spot on the ceiling.

He doesn’t call back.

-

Rick goes to buy gas on the way to work.

His Ford’s been nearing empty this week, and it’s a little calming to see the gallons tick up on the counter as gas funnels through pipes and into his tank. He finishes up around twenty bucks before he sets off on the road again.

It’s a nice day in the country. Spring, already. The sun’s out, flowers on the side of the road are starting to bud. The clouds spread out across the sky like they’re rolling waves on a seashore, and the air is clear. He puts the windows down and breathes in the fresh air.

He wonders if time will ever heal things enough to make breathing feel easy again. Even now, when the weather’s fine and the scent of the wild’s on the air, every breath is hard, as if his ribs are broken and every breath drags out a little more pain.

All of a sudden, there’s a voice, yelling.

Rick turns his head.

There’s no one there, in the field he’s passing. But he’s sure - there was a voice, it said -

“ _C’mon_ \- ”

There it is again.

(Real or unreal?)

He coasts to a stop, and looks a little more intently off the road. There’s a clump of trees, a ways away, but all he can see is a stretch of long grass and short, newly planted crops.

“ - _ick_. _C’mon, what the hell are you_ \- ”

Rick frowns. He thinks he might’ve heard his name.

There’s no one.

(That he can see.)

Rick starts driving again.

“ _C’mon_ \- ” he hears again. He glances that way, but still, nothing. He doesn’t slow down this time. Just keeps going.

At least this session, Rick consoles himself, he’ll have something to talk about.

Hershel seems to notice the second the session starts. Something the way Rick’s on the edge of his seat probably tips him off.

“Anything interesting happen lately?” Hershel asks.

Well, interesting isn’t quite how Rick’d describe it, but. Hell. “Yeah. Somethin’.”

Hershel looks intrigued. “What kind of something?”

Rick chews his lip, and hopes this time goes a little better than the last time he opened up to this Greene doctor. “Heard a voice. Not sure if - ” Rick pauses. “Well. Might not’ve been - ”

“Real?” Hershel finishes.

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell me what you heard?”

Rick shrugs. “Voice, sayin’, uh, ‘c’mon, what’re you doin’,’ or somethin’ like that.”

Hershel looks pensive. “I want to try something with you, if you’d bear with me. I’d like to ask you a myriad of questions about when and where this happened, to get a sense of the surroundings and the situation.”

Rick shrugs. “Okay.”

Hershel peers at him. “Okay.” Hershel stands up from behind his desk and walks around to one of the armchairs. He plops down in it and sits back. “So, Rick,” he says companionably, “What were you doing when you heard it?”

“Driving back to town.”

“From?”

“From my house. It’s south on State Road 19.”

“That must be nice and quiet, out there. What were you thinking about, while driving?”

Rick furrows his brow. “Uh. Breathin’ in the fresh air, I guess.”

“What did it smell like?”

“Well, uh, fresh rain. And the flowers that’re startin’ to pop up. Maybe some kinda tree I don’t know the name of. Pollen.”

“There’s some poplars out that way, maybe that’s the type of tree you’re talking about. What did you see around you, right when you first heard it?”

Rick thinks back, trying to recall all the little things. “The road, I was lookin’ at the double yellow lines on the road. The red asphalt.”

“Where did you look when you heard the voice?”

“Out the window, where I heard it come from. The, uh, driver’s side window. Sounded like it was coming from a ways away, off the road’s shoulder somewhere in the field I was drivin’ by. Didn’t see anyone, though. Just an empty field and a clump of trees.”

“What did the voice sound like? Man, woman?”

Rick frowns. “Couldn’t tell. Maybe a - man? It was middle register.”

“Okay. Did he sound scared? Angry? Sad?”

“Maybe… angry? Annoyed? He was yelling...”

“What was he yelling? Can you remember any keywords?”

“ _C’mon_ , he said that a few times. And _what the hell’re you_. I thought,” Rick’s mouth turns down unhappily. “I thought - I wasn’t sure, but - I thought I might’ve heard my name. Just caught half the word, just heard _ick_ , but in the moment, I thought… Well.”

“You thought the voice was addressing you,” Hershel says.

“Yeah.”

“Well, if I heard a voice yelling and I thought I heard my name, I’d think so too,” Hershel says, nodding.

Rick tilts his head, looking over Hershel again with new eyes. That… that’s sort of nice, for him to say that. Validating. Almost makes him feel like he might not be as crazy as he thinks he is.

Almost.

“After I heard that, what I thought was my name, I slowed down and tried to catch sight of someone. Couldn’t see a single living thing moving out there.”

Hershel hums. “You were trying to see if you could find a physical source to the sound. To try to see if it was real or not.”

“Exactly.”

Hershel looks thoughtful. “You have good instincts, Rick. That’s actually one of the most helpful therapeutic methods for schizophrenic symptoms. We in the medical field like to call it reality testing.”

“Reality testing,” Rick repeats. It sounds pretty much like what he’s done for most of his life. Real or unreal.

“Let’s look at all the things you noticed together, and try to prove whether or not the voice was real,” Hershel suggests.

“I know it’s not, now,” Rick defends. “It’s - I’m good, I know it wasn’t real now, it’s fine.”

“Humor me.” Hershel leans forward. “This isn’t about that. To the contrary, I know you’re a very sensible man. I would just like to try to make your next reality testing a little easier for you.”

Rick blinks. “That - I’m,” he stops. “Doc, I’m - not exactly sensible. Seein’ all this. Hearin’ voices.”

“I think you’re a very sensible person, Rick. Your brain has some very tricky misfiring chemicals, yes. And those do sometimes lead you to believe things that aren’t real, yes. But you - ” here, Hershel points at him, “ - are not to blame for that. You react to what you think is real, just like anyone else. It just so happens that sometimes, your brain lies to you about what’s real. Now all we have to do, besides getting you a medication that'll lessen your brain’s misfires, is focus on how to pin down what's real and what's not in the fastest and surest way possible.”

That - Rick thinks about that the whole way home.

When he eats dinner, when he goes to bed that night, he's still thinking about it. Marveling at it.

He's not crazy. He's not to blame for this. He doesn't have some personality defect or delusion that would make him into some dangerous time bomb of a person.

His brain’s just wired wrong.

-

Rick stops by the post office after work. He’s been going by there almost every day for the package Lori’d said was coming.

The postman smiles at him when he comes in.

“Mr. Grimes, I have your package,” he says.

It’s a little cardboard box, one that fits into the crook of his arm. It’s got postage stuck on the side a little haphazardly - Judith’s work, Rick figures - and scribbled writing that has to be Carl’s. It’s come from Atlanta with a rush order on it.

Rick thanks him, and takes it home.

He ends up cracking it open in the spare room upstairs, intent on unpacking the whole damn thing all at once, when he sees the envelope laid on the top.

Unpacking grinds to a halt. Rick stands up, picks the envelope up carefully, and peels the flap open.

There are photographs inside, glossy and heavy.

Rick takes a deep breath.

There’s one from maybe four or five years ago, just of him and Carl out in the yard. It was sunny, and their smiles were wide. He remembers Lori taking this from the driveway, remembers how they’d been playing catch to help Carl train for baseball tryouts.

It was a few years before everything fell apart, and something about Carl’s shorter hair and uncomplicated smile hurts something deep in Rick’s heart.

The next is a photograph of Judith as a newborn, just a few months out of the hospital. Rick wonders at her tiny fingernails, how she’s holding onto Lori’s thumb with both hands. He remembers that she was born early, born small.

The next has Judith from last year, before Rick left. It’s a group photo, one Rick didn’t know was being taken. It’s got everyone - Lori, Carl, Judith, him.

Shane.

Rick stands in the spare room, gripping the edges of the photos a little too hard.

He… still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about it all. Is he angry? He doesn’t know anymore. He’s just a big broken bundle of hurt.

(Why did she include _this one_?)

He decides to ignore the one with Shane for now, especially how it makes him feel, and skims through the rest. There’s one with the four of them, just him, Lori, and the kids, and another one with Carl sitting in the dugout during a game.

Okay.

Rick takes some of them and pins them up around the house. One up by his bed, one in the kitchen. Makes sure he has the one of Carl and Judy in his wallet.

He keeps the one with Shane in the envelope, and puts the envelope back in the box. Maybe someday, he thinks to himself.

But not today.

-

Rick’s on the beat again this week. Harrison’d gone last week, and Martinez the week before, so it’s his turn again. He’s never been a cop in such a small town before; he’s used to hundreds of cops in the station, with only rookies being assigned to the beat, and now there’s just four that keep switching off no matter where they are in the hierarchy. It’s got a whole different feel to it. Something more… involved. The people he sees on the street treat him like he’s a new son-in-law, or an old cousin they haven’t seen in years, rather than treating him like he’s a cop who might write them up a hefty parking ticket if they aren’t careful. He walks down the street, and the people seem like they’re one step away from inviting him to their next family Sunday dinner.

(Honestly, Rick is sort of dreading the inevitable invitation. He doesn’t want to go through the whole awkward process of turning it down, but he also doesn’t want to go through the whole painful process of getting his entire pathetic past twisted out of him.)

One guy Rick always seems to run into outside the grocery store is really nice, says his name’s Aaron. He’s always buying paper bags full of fruit and vegetables and loading them into his trunk. Rick offered to help once, and since then, it seems like Aaron always strikes up friendly conversation.

He smiles at Rick when he sees him today, and comments on the fact that they’re both wearing gold wedding rings.

“When’d you get married?” Aaron asks. “My five year anniversary is coming up, and I could use some guidance from a seasoned veteran.”

Rick tilts his head, tries to shake off the rueful edge to his smile. “Would’ve been sixteen years this July.”

“ _Oh_ , no, I’m so sorry.” Aaron visibly wilts. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Divorce. Might be in your best interest not to take my advice, I reckon.”

Aaron looks at him with sad eyes. “I’m so sorry. Jeez, I’m - I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Rick’s shrugs it off. “‘M all right. No harm, no foul.”

The next time Aaron strikes up a conversation with him, Rick notices he doesn’t allude to the subject of marriage at all. The next time, too.

(Rick’s taken to rubbing at his ring sometimes, when he’s alone. He wonders if it’ll start to hurt less if he takes it off. He wonders if it’ll just hurt more.)

-

The next day he’s feeling the weight of his ring as he walks down the road, and trying valiantly not to think about it.

There’s a vehicle parked on the street, about a foot too far from the curb to be legal. Rick sighs and writes out a ticket for a hundred dollar fine that he sticks under the windshield wipers. He keeps going, turns down a side street. He’s nearing the outskirts of downtown, and more houses are popping up than stores.

Rick is walking by a small yellow house with white trim when he hears something crash from inside. It’s tinkling, like shattered glass, and a rough, angry shout goes along with it. Then come the thuds, and then there’s a muffled scream. A child is crying.

Rick is at the front door in seconds, slamming his fist in four knocks that shudder the wood and rattle the hinges. “Police, open up!” he barks. “Police! Open the door.”

Silence drops.

Footsteps come towards him, creaking the floorboards as they go, and a man cracks open the door an inch or two. The chainlink is still locked, and the eye that stares at him though the gap is filled to the brim with something nasty.

“We received reports of a disturbance at this residence,” Rick says evenly.

“No disturbance here, officer,” the man says.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you to open the door.”

The eye narrows. “I know my rights. Can’t force me to do nothin’ without no warrant. Get goin’.”

“Sir,” Rick says in a tone of voice that service workers all over the world would immediately recognize, “I would speak with the other residents of this house to verify that everything is alright.”

The eye twitches. “Carol!” The man hollers to someone behind him. “Tell ‘im.”

“We’re fine, officer,” says a wavering voice. “No disturbance here. Isn’t that right, Sophia?”

A little girl hiccups and says, sounding strained, “Yes, momma.”

The man turns back to him and smirks. “See?” he says. “No disturbance. Get goin’.”

Rick grits his teeth. “Sir, I need visual confirmation that everyone is unharmed. I am legally obligated to do that before I can leave. Please open the door.”

The eye narrows to a dangerous slit. The man doesn’t move.

“Sir,” Rick repeats, “Open the door.”

There’s a flurry of movement from behind the man, some feet shuffling, some fabric swishing, and the man straightens up. “Goddamn waste of your time and mine,” he sneers, unlatching the chain and drawing the door the rest of the way open. He waves his hand towards the woman and child. “Go on, then, look.”

Carol is standing by the front stairs, holding her child - Sophia? Did Rick hear that right? - behind her by her shoulder. Carol is wearing a scarf and a lumpy sort of sweater, and the skin around Sophia’s eyes are red and raw.

There’s also glass shards littering the floor, and a dent on the wall where the bottle’d hit.

Rick studies Carol carefully. The scarf is tightly wound around her neck, and the coat that’s too big for her hangs off her wrists by about an inch. She’s favoring her ribs on her left side, hunching over and breathing unevenly, but he can’t see any bruises.

He does, however, see the man’s fists.

His knuckles are bruised.

Rick looks back up at the man, who’s smirking. Rick reaches back and grabs his handcuffs off his utility belt, and suddenly, the man isn’t smirking anymore.

“You have the right to remain silent,” he starts.

It ends with him filling out a report of a violent domestic altercation back at the station, with Edward Peletier in a cell and Carol standing in front of his desk with her daughter.

“You have to release him, Officer,” Carol pleads. “Ed didn’t do anything.”

Rick considers her, wearing a scarf and coat to a police station in the summertime. “It’s awfully warm, ma’am. Please, feel free to take off that coat.”

Carol reddens and averts her gaze. “You can’t arrest him, he said so himself, you’ve got no evidence. Or a warrant.”

“I do have probable cause to believe he was the primary physical aggressor,” Rick says. Carol frowns at that. “His knuckles were bruised up, and you’re favorin’ your ribs. That’s enough for an arrest, after a violent domestic disturbance. I’ve also filed for a week-long Emergency Protective Order for you and your daughter. I would recommend trying for something a little more long-lasting in the meantime, as you press charges.”

Carol’s nostrils flare. “I’m not pressing charges.”

Rick looks at her, and he suddenly feels tired. He thinks Carol might see that, because she wilts, just a little.

“That’s your decision,” he says, and his voice is low and measured. “I would still strongly recommend pressing charges and tryin’ to secure a permanent restraining order.” He glances at Sophia. “For the good of all parties involved.”

Carol seems spooked, and her fingers are gripping Sophia’s shoulders so hard her knuckles are white.

“I’m not pressing charges,” she repeats. Her voice is firm, but her eyes are panic-stricken.

Rick nods. “That’s your decision,” he repeats. Then he hesitates, and leans back in his chair. He looks where the doors lead to the holding cells, and then back at the pair in front of him.

He scribbles his number on the back of a county sheriff’s department card and holds it out.

“Here,” he says. “If it does happen again, or, if you do decide to - ” Rick huffs a breath out of his nose. “What I’m sayin’ is, you can gimme a call.”

Carol seems frozen, stuck looking at the card in his hand. She glances in the direction of the holding cells, then down at Sophia, and -

She takes the card. “Officer Grimes.”

“Mrs. Peletier.”

She leaves the station with her daughter’s hand in hers, and Rick’s card tucked into the deepest pocket she has.

Rick watches them go, and knows it’s not the last he’ll see of them.

(It isn’t.)

-

“So, Rick.”

Rick is quiet, sitting back in his armchair and staring through the paintings on the walls.

“How are you doing?” Hershel asks. “You’re quieter than usual today.”

Rick rubs his mouth with the palm of his hand. “Got a lot on my mind, Doc.”

“Did you see any hallucinations recently?”

Rick’s mouth tightens. “No.”

“Tell me what else is on your mind, then, Rick.”

Rick glares at the calm painting of green grass and open sky.

He’s quiet in general, but most especially, he’s quiet in anger.

(That always set Lori off, when he got like that. She only understood anger as something loud and explosive, but he only got quieter and more distant.)

(In a way, Rick is glad, though. Lori never had to deal with the kind of anger that’d come out of someone like Ed Peletier. And now she’s got Shane, which - Shane would _never_ hurt Lori like that, no matter how angry he was. Rick remembers the way Shane used to show up to school with fingerprints around his wrists and bruises in strange places.)

(He remembers the way Shane would rant and rave about his asshole father, how he’d go wild in fights with bullies, but he never, _ever_ , hit a girl. And he never hit Rick, no matter how bad they were fighting.)

(Even if he can’t be happy about anything else about them being together, Rick is - well - _secure_ in the fact that Shane and Lori would never abuse each other. Or Carl.)

(Rick knows he got lucky.)

(Carol and Sophia, well.)

(Not so much.)

“Abusive husband. Can’t get the wife to press charges, and there’s a little girl involved.” He glances at Hershel. There’s an almost comical surprise on his face. “What’s up, doc?”

“I was surprised, that’s all. You haven’t spoken a word about your new job until now.”

Rick shrugs.

Hershel presses, “So, what is it like? How are your coworkers?”

Rick picks at a non-existent thread in the armchair’s leather. “Fine.”

Hershel studies him.

“Are you worried about the little girl getting hurt?”

Rick thinks about the look on Carol’s face, the way her hands tightened on Sophia’s shoulders. He remembers Sophia’s reddened eyes, so red they were rubbed raw, and the way she hadn’t said a single word in front of him. He remembers the way Carol had had Sophia behind her in the house - had been shielding her. “...Yeah.”

Hershel looks pensive.

“It’s actually quite common for abused women to stay in their abusive relationships. Even if children are involved. There are a lot of reasons for that. I obviously don’t know the particulars of this case, but... The usual reasons include financial dependence on the abuser and a sense that the abuse was caused by their own behavior. And, of course, the fact that an abuser will almost certainly try to kill her if she leaves him.”

“Yeah.” Cops learn all about that over the years. Even if it’s not in their purview. His brow furrows. “How would she…?”

“Change her mind?” Hershel supplies.

Rick nods.

“Well, I would usually recommend therapy, and perhaps a very good attorney. And, of course, financial independence. A steady job and a safe place to live could do wonders.”

“Okay.” Rick nods to himself. A job, a place, and a lawyer. Maybe even a therapist. “Okay.”

-

Harrison looks like she thinks she heard him wrong, with a half-squint and a frown.

“Grimes, are you homeless?”

“No.”

Harrison squints at him a little harder. “Then why you askin’?”

Rick huffs.

“Fine, fine. Homeless shelter is down by the courthouse on Main Street. Jus’ go north, then west. Want a map?”

“Nah. Thanks, Harrison.”

He’s walking past the front desk out of the station when Martinez pipes up. “Hey, yo, _compadre_ , you need a place to stay, cuz I got a good deal for you. I got a friend, a cousin, actually, who sublets, sure she’d give you a good price.”

Rick blinks at him. “Don’t need a place.”

Martinez makes a face. “Then why you askin’ Harrison for one? She _married_ , dude. That ain’t cool.”

Rick holds up his hands, conciliatory. “For someone in town, stuck in a bad situation.”

“Oh, shit.” Martinez makes a completely different face. “You still give ‘em the good price for that subletting from my cuz, though, okay?” He scribbles down a name, a number, and a monthly price on a corner of the newspaper he’s reading, then rips it off the side. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Rick takes it, and damn, seventy-five dollars a month? That _is_ a good price.

Martinez must see it on his face, because he grins and throws him a thumbs-up. “I know, right? Cuz has got _crazy_ low rates. Hit her up, man, that’s prime real estate right there.”

Rick carefully tucks the scrap of newspaper into his wallet. “Thanks, Martinez.”

“No problemo, Ricardo.”

Rick is still trying to wrap his head around how he feels about being called ‘Ricardo’ when he gets to the courthouse. It’s impossible to miss, with its pillars and white limestone. _Forum ad Civitatem_ , bold and in Roman-styled lettering, is carved into the face of the front entrance.

There are some buildings in the downtown area from way back when, most of them near the very center. Must’ve been around the time the town was founded. This courthouse is one of them, towering over him like a mountain, even though it’s a little out of the way. They’re mostly made out of large blocks of limestone that go up like skyscrapers, or whatever the equivalent of a skyscraper is in a town where the next tallest buildings are only a couple stories high. This one’s had Rick’s attention from day one on walking the beat. He wonders what it looks like on the inside.

Right next door is a brick building - this is where Harrison said they had their shelter. It’s old, and the brick’s paint is peeling, but Rick can tell it used to be upscale. There’s stone gutters on the edges, with Gaelic knots and flowers decoratively carved in them.

He opens the front door and goes into the lobby. It’s enormous - Rick hadn’t thought it would be this impressive, but the floor is a few steps down from street level, and the lobby stretches all the way back to a staircase that must be at least eight hundred feet away. It seems almost cavernous, secretive, infinite.

Rick steps across the smooth stone floor. The click of his boots echoes through the bones of what must have once been a bustling hotel lobby.

For a second, he sees a shadow out of the corner of his eye, a movement. And there’s a sound, almost like the whisper of a dress against smooth stone floor. He turns, but there’s nothing there.

(Real or unreal?)

“‘Lo?” Rick tries.

There’s nobody in sight. He feels a little stupid doing it, but he clears his throat and tries again. “Hello, anyone here I could talk to? Got a few questions, is all.”

His eyes dart around, settling on a dusty bell sitting on the concierge bar. He doesn’t have anything to lose.

A tap sends a bright ring through the room.

There’s a thud and a groan from the door behind the concierge bar. Then some shuffling around, and the door creaks open. A man steps out with a white beard and a scowl on his face, wearing a fishing hat and a Hawaiian button-up shirt.

“What?”

“”Lo there,” Rick says. “My name’s Officer Rick Grimes. Work down at the sheriff’s department. Jus’ had a couple questions, if you had the time or inclination.”

The man shrugs and plops down in a chair behind the bar. “Well, give me the questions, and I’ll see if I’ve got any inclination to spare.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Call me Dale.”

“Right. Dale.” Rick pauses. “How would someone go about - livin’ here? I been told this here’s the town shelter, and I’ve got some people in need of a place to stay.”

The tautness in Dale’s shoulders relaxes. “That’s an easy one,” he says with a hint of a smile. “Just go next door to the court house. Sasha’s the one you’ll need to speak with; she basically runs the whole operation. She’ll need to meet them face to face, of course.”

“Okay,” Rick says. “How long til they could move in, after meetin’ with her?”

Dale hems and haws. “Hard to say, but usually, no more than a few days.”

“Okay.” Rick considers Dale for a second. “Is there a security system? There’s, uh, a restraining order involved.”

Dale hums. “Well, all the doors need a key to open, with deadbolts and a chain. The walls have a concrete center and are lined with steel beams. If they get a room on a higher floor, I wouldn’t think they’d have any worries about anybody getting in. Besides,” Dale continues with an edge to his voice, “Everybody in the building would be on the lookout for the asshole.”

“Okay,” Rick says.

( _Good_ , he thinks.)

“Sasha should be in her office now, you can head right on over if you want.”

Rick does.

He goes inside the courthouse and asks around until he gets to the right office. He knocks on the door frame, and the woman sitting at the desk looks up. Her hair is drawn in a tight bun and the look on her face is decidedly no-nonsense.

“Officer Rick Grimes,” Rick says. “Lookin’ for a Counselor Sasha Williams.”

“You found her.”

“I’m lookin’ to see what the options are for someone to get a room next door,” he starts carefully. “Talked to Dale, said for me t’ come over here and talk to you. Got someone who needs alternate housing, trying to figure out what the options are.”

Sasha’s eyes narrow. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with Carol and Sophia Peletier having a week-long restraining order filed by the Sheriff’s Department a little more than two hours ago, would it?”

“That’d be it. Carol was...” Rick hesitates. “Not too keen on pressing charges or filing a long-term restraining order, to be honest. I’m tryin’ to get together some options for her, let her look at all of ‘em before makin’ a decision.”

“And you only have a week.” Sasha sighs. “Well, you can tell Carol and her little girl that she has a room if she needs one. We’ve got a few openings, and rent’s what you can pay based on your income. Five dollars a week, at the lowest. And tell her if she doesn’t have any income, we try to set people up with a job in town or somewhere close by so they don’t have to worry about making rent. She’ll do just fine.”

“Okay. Do I bring her here?”

“Yep. Here,” Sasha tears off a piece of paper from a notepad and scribbles on it. “Here’s a number she can call any time to reach me. Officer Grimes, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Officer Grimes, you got any other people in need of a place to stay, you can send them ‘round or give them my number.”

Rick takes it from her. “Thank you, Counselor.”

“You’re welcome, Officer.”

He walks out of Sasha Williams’ office with that slip of paper tucked into his wallet.

He might take a little longer than he usually would’ve on his way out of the courthouse, just looking at the tall ceilings and the paintings on the walls, before he heads on back to his car to head home.

-

Rick shows up at Carol’s door with a folder two days before the protective order runs out.

He holds the folder out, saying, “Put this together for you. ‘S just a compilation of all your options. Places to live, paperwork you’d need to file. It’s all there, if you wanna use it. And you got my number, if you got any questions or need any help.”

Carol wordlessly takes the folder from him, and doesn’t look him in the eye when she shuts the door.

Rick stands there for a long moment, hoping beyond hope that he might have made a difference, before he turns and walks off the front porch.

-

A few weeks later, Rick’s in T’s Diner having his usual and shooting the shit with his new acquaintance Glenn - who works in the back and has a real chip on his shoulder about people not taking baking seriously as an artform - when his phone starts ringing.

Glenn flaps a hand at him when he ignores it, and says, “I’ve got to go back to the kitchen anyway, go ahead,” and heads for the back.

So Rick shrugs and checks the caller. It’s some number he doesn’t know. The area code is - well, it’s from this county.

All of a sudden, Rick’s got a bad feeling.

“‘Lo?” he answers.

There isn’t a response. Just breathing.

His feeling gets worse.

“Carol?” he asks quietly.

There’s no response, but the breathing changes, and he listens closer. There’s shouting in the background, loud shouting between a man and a woman, and Rick -

Rick thinks he knows who’s on the phone.

“...Sophia?” he says, even quieter than before. “D’you want me to come help you and yer mom?”

There’s just background noise for a while, with the indistinct fighting and the buzz of a TV or something, until finally the quietest voice Rick’s ever heard whispers, “Yeah.”

“Okay, you just stay quiet and where you are, okay? I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay,” Sophia says, and disconnects the phone.

Shit.

“Maggie,” Rick calls, jumping out of his booth and throwing money on the table. “Sorry! Got an emergency, gotta go _now_.”

Maggie looks at him with wide eyes, but just says, “Yes, boss.”

Rick rushes out of the place and sprints to his car.

“Dispatch, we need squad cars over at the Peletiers, _stat_ ,” Rick barks into his radio. “I just got a call from Sophia Peletier, something bad’s going down, we need to get there yesterday. Think Ed’s goin’ on a rampage, I’m driving there right now.”

“Shit,” Martinez swears. “On our way, ETA less than five.”

“Copy,” Rick says, and skids to a stop in the Peletier driveway. He can hear the screaming from here.

“Police!” Rick yells, running up and pounding on the door with his baton. “Sheriff’s department, open up!”

There’s an enraged roar from inside, followed by, “You called the fuckin’ _cops_ on me? The _fuckin’ cops_? After what happened? You goddamn bitch, you got this hidden fuckin’ folder, you called the fuckin’ cops, you got it _out for me_ \- ”

Then there’s an impact, a nasty wet one. Rick inhales sharply and hopes that isn’t the sound of Carol’s head being smashed in on a sharp corner.

Fuck it.

Rick slides his baton back in his utility belt and kicks the goddamn door down.

“Police!” he screams at Ed, who’s looming over a downed Carol. There’s blood soaking into the living room carpet from where her head got hit. She seems conscious, but woozy. Probably can’t stand up by herself. “Back away from her,” he snaps, drawing his Colt and cocking it.

Ed’s livid face twists into something sneering and evil.

“I mean it, Ed,” Rick warns. “You don’t step away, I shoot.”

“Yer a cop,” Ed sneers. “Not gonna kill me,” and makes a sudden violent movement towards Carol, swiping for her face, or going for her neck, Rick can’t tell for sure.

Rick puts a bullet in Ed’s leg. Right in the shin.

Ed howls like an animal, ratcheting backwards until he slams against the nearest wall. He clutches at the bullet wound with scrabbling fingers. “You fuck, you pig _fuck_ , you fuckin’ _shot_ me!”

“Don’t have to kill you to shoot you,” Rick says grimly. “Now don’t make me shoot your other leg. Stay where you are, don’t move a muscle.”

Ed looks at Rick with the clearest, purest form of hatred.

“Fuckin’ pig,” Ed spits at him. “You got no goddamn right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rick says dismissively. “Stay right there. Sophia?” he calls. “C’mere, come help your mama.”

“Sophie, don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Ed says.

“C’mon, Sophia.” Rick keeps his eyes right on Ed, and his finger on the trigger. He’s not gonna give the asshole a single chance to get his last hits in. “Your mother needs some help.”

There’s a shuffling from down the hall in the next room - the dining room, maybe? - and Sophia appears, her face stained with tear tracks.

“Sophia,” Rick says with no small relief, not taking his eyes off Ed. “Can you help your mama out the front door?”

She doesn’t answer, but after a moment, she shuffles forward towards Carol.

“Sweetie,” Ed says in a rusty, sickly sweet voice. Sophia freezes in place. “Don’t trust him, he shot your Daddy. He’ll hurt you, you and your momma.”

“Don’t worry, Sophia,” Rick says. “I got eyes on him. You just help your mother. Focus on that. He does anything, he’ll wish he hadn’t.”

Rick sees her nod out of the corner of his eye, and start moving forward again.

“Baby,” Carol slurs. “Baby, momma’s having a hard time standing up, can you - ”

Sophia bends down and winds her small hands through Carol’s underarms, and helps hoist her to her knees. “Thank you, baby,” Carol says. “The door, now.”

They move for the door, and Rick steps to the side to let them pass. Ed looks like he’s about to try something, he’s practically vibrating with intent to kill, so Rick says calmly, sights trained down the barrel, “You don’t want what’s comin’, if you do what yer thinkin’.”

He hears the creak of the porch steps, and the sounds of sirens wailing.

Carol and Sophia are out safe and out of range, and Ed is contained. And his backup is finally here.

“Ed Peletier, you are under arrest,” Rick says, and reads him his full Miranda rights.

-

Lunch at T’s Diner the next day is on the house.

People he only vaguely knows come up to him and pat him on the back. Thank him. Give him nods from across the diner.

Glenn comes out with the owner - Tyreese, he introduces himself.

“I know you been hearing this all day, probably,” Tyreese says. “But you done a real good thing, here. For this town, but mostly for Carol and her little girl. So,” Tyreese smiles wide, “Thank you. Don’t you be worrying about the bill today.”

He holds out a hand, and Rick shakes it.

“Thank you,” Rick says, not knowing what else to say to that. “Just doin’ my job.”

Tyreese grins. “And we’re all lucky that you’re here, doin’ it.”

He heads back to the kitchen.

Glenn forgoes the whole spiel and handshake and goes straight in for the hug. “You’re awesome, dude,” he says, squeezing him like all his happiness is bursting out of him. “Saved lives _and_ kicked ass!” He lets go, beaming. “Just awesome! Seriously. Hey, you like muffins? Cuz you’re gonna get some muffins. Blueberry? Poppyseed? Chocolate chip? Hit me with your best shot, I can do any muffin there is.”

Rick chortles, and shakes his head. He knows he’s a day or two away from a mountain of muffins, no matter what he says. Might as well have a kind he likes. “Poppyseed, I guess.”

“You got it, man!” Glenn fingerguns away from him, making Rick laugh even more. Maggie is trying not to smile, but failing miserably.

Honestly, the best news of the day isn’t the free lunch. Or the muffins, not that he’s gonna tell that to Glenn.

No, the best news is, Carol’s gonna be fine, just has to walk off a concussion after six stitches. Oh, and, Rick is happy to say, she’s decided to press charges and go for a permanent restraining order.

Yeah. It’s a good day.

-

The Peletier case dies down when Ed’s thrown into holding, waiting for the judge to grant bail, and the station settles back into its normal routine.

Martinez has taken to calling Rick _hermano_ , after Rick sort of tries to awkwardly tell him that being called Ricardo confuses him on a basic human level.

 _Really_ taken to it. He fits it into almost anything he says to Rick, to the point where it’s almost synonymous with Rick’s name.

“ _Hermano_ , you want coffee? How about a doughnut?”

“Hey, you got a call coming in, _hermano_.”

“Hey, Harrison, tell my _hermano_ Grimes here ‘bout your smokin’ hot wife. Seriously, she is _smokin’_.”

Eventually, Rick just looks at him funny and has to ask. It’s after Rick’s shift’s up, and Martinez has just finished a twenty minute phone call with a stressed out grocery shopper convinced they’d accidentally shoplifted a few extra bananas. He’d signed off the call with, “Hey, _hermano_ , you that worried about it, I’ll cover the cost myself, ok? What is it, like, two dollars max? Yeah. You just get back home to your kids. Alright? Alright. Bye.”

Rick stops where he is, halfway to the door, and chews at his lip. “Hey, Martinez,” he says, “What’s it mean, when you call me _hermano_?”

Martinez just beams, claps him on the shoulder, and says, “Means you’re like a brother to me, man.” And he walks off to the break room.

Brother.

Rick… well, Rick doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s kind of touched.

-

A box appears on Rick’s desk at work. There’s a fresh batch of poppyseed muffins inside, still steaming hot from the oven. Nobody seems to know where they came from.

-

The next time he sees Hershel, Rick’s in a good mood. He, well.

He opens up.

Just a little bit. Talks about his family, his parents, his bundle of confusing emotions. It’s hard, and every sentence takes effort, but dammit, Rick does it.

And this time, Hershel doesn’t say anything that has Rick snapping his mouth shut or wishing he’d never said anything at all. No, he actually just… listens.

Hershel actually stops and thanks him, at the end of the session. For a lot of things. For helping Carol, for taking time to go to a session every week, for always taking his daily medication. But mostly, Hershel thanks him for starting to trust him enough to really open himself up to therapy.

It’s… nice.

On top of that, Rick hasn’t seen or heard anything unreal in weeks. Maybe, just, maybe, Rick thinks, he’s starting to get his life back on track.

(He should’ve known it wouldn’t last.)

-

This morning’s a little overcast, with a small chance of rain. Rick thinks to throw an umbrella in the back of his truck before he leaves the house.

The station’s had a couple calls in, but nothing too serious. A shoplifter was apprehended at the gas station. Another car accident happened on Main Street, where someone got rear-ended by someone trying to parallel park. Reports of a lost dog, with posters to hand out.

Harrison is griping about it, how calm it is. “Damn, just give me an actual goddamn case already,” she complains. “Anything but this same old shit. How come Martinez got the shoplifter? I’m the senior deputy here. Unbelievable.”

“Hey,” objects Martinez. “Uncool, dude. I got to get cases sometimes, too.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get the next one, Harrison,” Rick says, humoring her. Even though she’s the senior deputy, Rick knows she’s only been at this job for less than five years. He doubts she’s gotten one of the kinds of cases that make cops think twice. He has, and he knows for a fact that ‘boring’ is a damn sight better.

Still, it’s pretty quiet in the station.

It’s so quiet, Rick can hear when Harrison yawns, and when Martinez takes another call from dispatch.

“King’s County Sheriff’s,” Martinez says. “This is Officer Martinez, what’s up.”

Rick tries to fight down a smile. No matter how much the Sheriff tries to force it out of him, Martinez keeps using slang over the phone.

“Yeah, uh,” Martinez says, and his casual tone changes so sharply it has the hairs on the back of Rick’s neck raised. “ _Fuck!_ Guys! Harrison, Grimes - hey! Guys!”

Rick is up by the front desk so fast he doesn’t quite know how he got there. “‘S goin’ on?”

“This dude - Pete Dolgan? - says someone’s at his door tryna break in and kill him, says he’s holed up in the basement - uh, 4490 South Adams - he’s screamin’, man, think the door’s almost down - ”

Harrison cuts in, “I know the place. C’mon, Grimes, let’s go.”

“Yes ma’am,” Rick says, and they’re off in a squad car. Harrison hits the sirens and the gas.

They screech to a halt on the street in front of the house. It’s a bungalow, small, with no lights on.

The front door is broken down, completely smashed through. Didn’t get here in time to stop the attacker from breaching, that’s for sure.

Harrison and Rick step through the doorway and into the front hall, which is still littered with large wooden splinters. They’ve both got their guns drawn and their safeties off.

“Police,” Harrison yells. “Lookin’ for a Mr. Pete Dolgan. He ‘round here?”

There’s no answer. They move to case the house, one room at a time. First floor’s clear.

Then Rick finds the door to the basement.

“Harrison,” he calls. “Basement door’s over here.”

“Shit,” she breathes as soon as she sees it.

Yeah. The basement door’s been taken down just like the front door - all that’s left in the center are splinters and wood chips.

Rick heads down first, flashlight in one hand and Colt in the other. “Mr. Dolgan?”

There’s a weird sound he can’t quite place. He frowns, but keeps going. “Pete? Pete Dolgan?”

Rick reaches the bottom of the stairs, and turns to see -

Well. That explains the sound.

A man that Rick assumes is Pete Dolgan is there on the floor with blood pouring out of his empty eye sockets, squirting out every heartbeat onto the cement floor with an odd gurgling sound.

“Jesus,” Rick breathes.

“Grimes, what the hell is - ” Harrison comes down the stairs and stops at the sight of Dolgan. “ _Jesus_. Um.”

As they watch, the blood coming out his eyes slows to a stop, and the heaving chest finally slumps into stillness.

“Jesus,” Rick says, hushed, and radios it in. “Martinez, Sheriff, we got ourselves a... situation... here.”

“‘S for damn sure,” Harrison mutters. “ _Jesus_.”

-

Police procedure takes over, and Rick is calmly processing paperwork and fielding questions from his senior officer at the same time back at the station.

Gives him a little time to… think.

(He’s in shock. He’s fairly sure.)

(Hopefully it’ll be out of his system soon.)

-

“He didn’t make it,” Harrison tells him a half hour later. “They tried cauterizing the… wounds, and giving him blood transfusions. Too late. He was dead too long before the EMTs got to him.”

Rick breathes out a sigh. “Thought as much.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Damn.”

“I got lead on the case,” Harrison adds, but she doesn’t seem too thrilled about it.

Rick looks at her. She’s tired and drawn. “Got the case you wanted, huh, Harrison,” he says softly. “Sorry it had to be this one.”

She wilts a little. “Me too, I should never have said that. I - ”

“Hey. _Hey_. Not your fault,” Rick says firmly. “You wantin’ an interesting case has nothin’ to do with this crime. You hear?”

“I hear,” she says, but she sounds defeated.

“Hey, now,” Rick says, standing up. “None of that, Deputy,” and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder.

She slumps into it like her strings have been cut. “I - I can’t help it,” she confesses. “Sorry, I know I - and - but I’ve never had a murder case like this before, I - ”

“It’s alright,” Rick soothes, squeezing her shoulder. “Every cop on the force ends up here, this same damn day, if they last long enough.”

“I wasn’t - I didn’t want a _murder_ , I was thinking maybe just - another shoplifting case, or, or - ”

“Can’t control what kinds of cases cross our desks,” Rick states. “Can only control how we respond to them. Wasn’t anything to do with you, _at all_. And I know you know that. It’ll just take some time for you t’ _believe_ that.”

Harrison swallows and brushes away some rogue tears at the edges of her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah.” She stands a little straighter. “Thanks.”

“No need, Harrison. Go call your wife, and tell Morgan to give you the rest of the day off.”

“Y’know, you should really start calling me Andrea sometimes. Only so many times we can get traumatized together before we get to use first names.”

Rick nods. “You got it, Andrea.”

-

Later, Rick’s in Morgan’s office.

“Any sign of the intruder?” Morgan asks him. It’s probably the fifth time Rick’s been asked that, probably the third time he’s been asked that by Morgan himself, but police procedure is all about taking evidence and mulling over it from a thousand different angles. He doesn’t take it personal. It’s just standard.

“Not that I know of that isn’t in the report,” Rick says.

“And what’s in the report.”

“Intruder used some type of object to break down the doors, high impact. Those doors were pretty solid, ‘bout two or three inches thick, and they had pretty sizeable holes in ‘em. Whatever it was, it was smaller than a battering ram and bigger than a pick-axe. I’m guessing some kind of middle range axe. Were some signs around the hole’s edges of repeated chopping. I think forensics came back and guessed the intruder’s height based on the angles of those chops. Something like, uh, five foot six, five foot eight, maybe.” Rick pauses. “Didn’t find any strange footprints, though. Went over the porch, and there were plenty of shoe prints all over. But they were almost all Mr. Dolgan’s. Even the ones in the basement. None of the other prints seemed like they’d been involved in the chopping, either, just straight in and out the door. Almost like the intruder wore covers, sir.”

“Covers,” Morgan says thoughtfully. “Those things you wear on your shoes, to not disturb the crime scene?”

“That’s right.”

“We call ‘em booties here. So, Grimes,” Morgan continues, “What else you got?”

“Looked for fingerprints, and for the tool used to break down the doors. Fingerprints either came up as Mr. Dolgan, or as incomplete or unidentifiable. There were no axes or other kinds of bludgeoning or chopping tools on the premises. We did find a shotgun and some shells, in the hands of Mr. Dolgan. It appears, according to the casings we found, that Mr. Dolgan let off about five shots at the intruder. We’ve only found three shells so far, so he may have hit the intruder once or twice. Still looking, though.”

“No blood on the ground where the intruder may have been shot?”

Rick shrugs. “Unfortunately, we can’t tell at this point. Dolgan’s blood spread through almost the entire basement floor. Nothing yet from forensics on that.”

“Shit.” Morgan looks pensive. “Anything else? Any possibilities?”

“There was a camera at the scene, one of those handhelds,” Rick recalls. “Think Harrison is gonna be taking inventory on the tapes in it. Didn’t see any other security cameras on the premises, though. And there’s only a few other houses around. We could canvas, see if the neighbors saw anything, or have their own cameras.”

“Okay.” Morgan sighs. “We’ll talk more later. For now, go knock on some doors.”

“Yessir.” Rick turns to leave the office. There’s a window in the door, reflecting the windows to the outside. Just as he steps forward and reaches out for the doorknob, Rick’s eye catches on the reflection of the parking lot just beyond Morgan’s office.

There’s a man there, dripping blood, staring at them. He’s grinning, and is so close his nose is practically pressed against the glass.

He has a bloody knife in one hand, still matted with chunks of flesh. In the other -

Is a fucking jar with two eyeballs rolling around inside.

“ _Shit_! Get down!”

Rick whips out his Colt and fires off three shots, right through the window. The glass shatters, and the man -

Wait.

There is no man.

Rick stares out the destroyed remains of the window, and all he sees are brand new bullet holes in the side of one of the patrol cars.

Morgan is stock still. Frozen in place.

And he’s looking at Rick like he’s never seen him before.

“Sir,” Rick starts, but Morgan isn’t having it. He cuts Rick off with a sharp hand gesture.

“Grimes,” Morgan says, dead serious. “Did you just shoot at nothing out my fuckin’ office window.”

Rick flounders around for the right thing to say.

“Unload that .357, Deputy,” Morgan orders.

Rick does, immediately. The ammo drops on the floor.

Morgan stands up, carefully, like Rick is a wild animal or a grenade about to go off. “Go see Hershel.”

Rick blanches. “Morgan - ”

“Don’t Morgan me, Grimes. Hershel’s office. Now.”

Rick crumples in on himself. “Sir...”

“Don’t give me that look, Deputy.” Morgan wavers on the next thing he’s got coming, but goes on to say, “It’s not what you’re thinking. I just - go see Hershel. Talk. You know how regulation is. Can’t have any trigger-happy cops on the payroll.”

“...Understood.”

Rick leaves, swinging the door shut behind him. He hears Morgan call his name again, sounding apologetic, but Rick doesn’t wait to hear what he has to say.

-

“So,” Hershel says, sounding more unsure than Rick’s ever heard him. “You… saw something, I gather.”

“I did,” Rick says numbly. He’d seen it again on the way here, lurking in the corner of his vision. Even though he knows it isn’t real now, he’s still shaken up about it.

“Can you describe what you saw?”

Rick does, but by the time the session is over, Hershel’s face isn’t even close to the usual levels of calm.

“It seems as if,” Hershel hesitates. “As if, perhaps, the sight you saw, the murder victim, caused a visceral, violent intrusive thought of what you imagined the murderer to be. And - a trigger of some sort made you see him. A psychotic paranoid delusion, triggered by recent trauma.”

Rick remembers the mad look in that smiling man’s eyes, the way the bloody eyeballs had rolled across the bottom of that glass jar. Like they were sticky.

“Okay,” Rick allows. “So, what now? Am I off the force?”

“No, no,” Hershel says. Rick relaxes a bit. “Not at all. I - well, perhaps you should consider taking a day or two off from work, to see if the intrusive thought comes back. But no, I would say that, as long as you keep in mind that you’re particularly at risk for hallucinations, you should be fine for day to day work. And,” he adds, “I think it might do us good to wean off this medication. We might try another type, maybe come up with a better chemical balance. Let’s hope this new one is a better fit this time.”

“Okay, doc.”

They go through the minutia of changing the medication, Rick agrees to take one day off work, and it’s over. Rick drives home, seeing a flicker of the smiling hallucination in his mirrors, following him, even though it’s pitch-black outside.

He forgoes half his normal dose, and falls straight into bed afterwards.

Jesus, what a day.

-

He wakes up sometime around noon. He makes himself breakfast in a sort of half-awake state, and flops on the couch to mindlessly watch TV.

The whole day goes by, and Rick hasn’t done a goddamn thing. Hasn’t even left the house.

(He has this creeping feeling that the smiling man is waiting for him, just outside these walls.)

He watches more trash on TV and eats snacks, and that’s it. Around dinner, he makes a little more food, because damn, he’s starving. All those meals at T’s Diner have got him used to a lot more in his stomach.

Around nine o’clock at night, Rick finally gets up the motivation to pull out his phone and call Shane.

“This ’s Walsh,” Shane answers.

“Hi.”

“Hey!” Shane says, surprised. “Rick! This Rick?”

“‘S me. Yeah.”

“What the fuck, Rick? Why didn’t you open the door when I showed up at yer new digs? Must’ve knocked for a whole goddamn hour to see your sorry ass.”

“Shane, Jesus, I didn’t know you came all the way out here,” Rick groans, running a hand through his hair.

“Bullshit, you knew.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Don’t gimme that. You were home.”

“If I was, I would’ve answered the door, I’m not a goddamn teenager. I’m telling you, I wasn’t at home, okay, I was at work.”

“ _Work_?!” Shane exclaims.

“Yeah, _work_ , asshole.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man? You don’t work. Not since before.”

“I do. I’ve been working the beat in the little nearby town.”

“What, seriously?”

“Yeah, every day of the week, plus overtime. And before you ask, _no_ , I’m not, and yes, they approved it months ago. It ain’t Atlanta, it won’t kill me. Doing a whole lot of nothing, though, that might do the trick.” Rick lets out a humorless chuckle.

“Shit.” Shane’s quiet for a second. “...I... I tried to give you time.”

Rick sighs. “Yeah, you did, and it was real good of you, brother. I needed the time away from...” he waves his hand in the air. “...Everything. You know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Thanks. Thank you.” Rick pauses. “And... Shane, did you... D’you know about last night? They tell you?”

Turns out… they did not.

(Shit.)

“Uh, okay,” Rick says uneasily. “Then I should be the one to tell you, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t anything like what happened, uh. Before. So don’t freak out, okay?”

Yeah, that doesn’t do much. Shane freaks out.

Rick tries to explain, repeats that nobody got hurt a few times, tells him it’s nothing like seeing Lori, tells him what Hershel’d said. The whole deal. Explains how he’s weaning off the medication so he can start a new one.

Finally, Shane’s explosion subsides, and there’s quiet on the line for awhile.

Rick finally breaks the silence. “It’s... God, Shane, I thought I was gettin’ somewhere, was fixing up. Turns out nothing’s really changed since I left.”

Shane sighs out a breath. “You’re tryin’, Rick. That’s all anyone can ask. ‘Specially with this kinda thing. And you know what else hasn’t changed? Th’ fact that I love you. We all do.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “Love you too, brother. Tell Lori and Carl I love ‘em, would you, and give little Judy a kiss from me, huh?”

“I will. A big ol’ wet one. She’ll like that.”

Rick smiles sadly. “Bye, Shane.”

“Bye.”

Rick hangs up the phone, slides it into his pocket, and tries not to cry.

He’s mostly successful.

Mostly.

-

The next morning, Rick gets up and goes to work like it’s any other day. The only thing that’s different is the dose of pills he downs before he shaves.

It feels a little different. His belt seems heavier, his sense that the smiling man is out there waiting for him is still hanging over his head. But he knows that it’s just in his head; everything other than that weird feeling is perfectly normal.

He says hi to Martinez at the front desk as he walks in the door. “Morgan in?”

“Yeah. Pissed as hell, though. Wouldn’t go in for another half hour if I were you.”

Rick hums. He wonders if Morgan’s pissed about him coming back to work so soon, or if it’s something else.

Who’s he kidding. It’s almost a hundred percent chance that it’s about Rick’s little incident.

“Don’t say a damn thing, Martinez,” Harrison snaps as she comes in, just to stave off Martinez’ usual commentary. It looks like she’s had a hard night or two; she looks like hell warmed over. Rick can relate. “Hey, Grimes, you got a second?”

“Sure,” Rick says, spinning in his chair to face her. “Whatcha need, Harrison?”

“Wondered if you could take a look at a profile I’m working on.”

“Which case?”

She sighs. “That damn basement case.”

The basement case - the one where Pete Dolgan’s eyes were cut out of his head and he bled to death in his own basement case? That case? The one that happened two days ago, that Harrison is assigned lead on? The one that gave him a goddamn hallucination that had him basically carted off to the loony bin after shooting empty air? _That_ one? “Andrea - ”

“I know, Rick,” Andrea interrupts, looking ashamed of herself. “I’m supposed to build this one on my own, blah blah blah. Just – could you take a look at it? I’ve been staring at it for so long I’ll be permanently cross-eyed by the time it’s closed.”

Rick breathes a long sigh out his nose. It’s only been two days, but he’s pretty sure Harrison hasn’t slept since it happened and has just been going over the file over and over again. He knows the crazed look in her eyes a little too well.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Just one look. Leave it on my desk and I’ll get to it after my patrol.”

“Thank you,” she says fervently. “I owe you one, Grimes.”

She heads over to her own desk, nursing her coffee. Rick chuckles. Owing him one. Another thing he’s learned from his years on the force - favors from other officers trump money, any day. “I’m gonna cash in on that one someday, Harrison.”

“I know, I know.” She waves her free hand over her shoulder as she goes.

He turns his attention back to his paperwork. He’s got a carjacking case that he’s a form away from closing up, and he’s planning on getting it in this morning. Crosses his T’s, dots his I’s…

“Whoa, Grimes! It’s only been ten minutes,” Martinez says fearfully when he finally gets up and heads for Morgan’s door. “You’ll want to wait another twenty at least, he’ll rip your head off.”

Maybe _your_ head, Rick thinks. Not mine. “No, he won’t,” he says. And he knocks.

Morgan grunts from inside. “Martinez, I swear to _god_ I’ll throw you in a holding cell and throw away the key if you knock on my door _one more fucking time_ – ”

“Morgan,” Rick says patiently, trying to fight down a smile. Like he’d ever actually follow through on that threat. “I got your file on last week’s carjacking.”

There’s a pause.

(For a moment, Rick’s unsure. What if he’s misjudged - )

“Rick,” Morgan says, damn near happily. “What are you waiting for, get the fuck in my office.”

Rick grins. “Yessir.”

He walks in and turns over the carjacking report, sliding it right into Morgan’s inbox. Then he sits, and Morgan’s off.

Turns out, the reason Morgan’s annoyed at the world today has nothing to do with Rick seeing things and shooting off rounds, or coming back to work after only one day off. No, it has to do with the liquor store owner named Jenner that keeps calling the station at odd times, going on paranoid rants. Morgan just hasn’t gotten enough sleep.

Rick’s kind of relieved.

Morgan sends him to go check on the guy that called last night, and to bring back coffee and doughnuts after his beat’s done. That’s easy enough.

-

The sun’s supposed to be out sometime later today, but for the moment, it’s cloudy. Rick doesn’t mind it much; gives him a little extra shade in these hot Georgia summers. There’s not too many people, but there’s a smattering of folks starting to come outside and get around town. Nine o’clock seems to be the time this place really starts to wake up, and it’s not even 8:30 yet.

A little girl - Stephanie, Rick thinks, he’s met her before with her mom - comes up to him on just by the corner store. Stephanie’s got a stuffed bunny in the crook of her arm, and bright yellow shoes with untied laces.

“Officer?” Stephanie asks.

Rick crouches down to her eye level. “What can I do for you, little lady?”

“I...” She bites her lip, thinks about it, and says, “Please, could you fix my shoes?”

“You mean,” Rick says, fighting down a smile, “can I tie your shoelaces?”

“’Zactly,” she says. “Can you tie my shoelaces.”

“Well, ma’am, I’d be happy to.” Rick leans down and takes her shoelaces in hand. The last time he did this, it was Judith’s shoelaces, and she’d just tripped over them in her haste to grab his legs in a tight hug. “Could be dangerous, walking around without your laces tied. It was good of you to ask.” He makes sure to double the knot, then draws back. “There you are, all finished.”

“Thank you, Mister!” Stephanie says before she darts off in a straight, focused line for the corner store’s door.

“Welcome,” Rick calls after her. He huffs a little laugh. Just like little Judy. He remembers the way he’d felt when she smiled at him for the first time, her blonde hair glowing in the sunlight and her eyes all crinkled up with uncomplicated happiness. He remembers how she hung on to his thumb with her entire tiny hand, how her fingernails were smaller than niblet corn kernels.

He remembers Carl, too. How Carl’d gotten stubborn as a toddler and wouldn’t let go of his favorite toy, even when he was practically asleep. How he’d storm from one place to the next, like he was always on a mission.

God, he misses them.

-

Carol comes out of the grocery loaded down with paper bags, Sophia trailing behind her with a few of her own. She’s at her car unlocking the doors when she sees him walking by. She says hi, and, well, Rick’s mother raised him to be a southern gentleman. He’s got to stop and help with the heavy lifting.

Rick grabs a bag. He’s happy to see that there are quite a lot of groceries to pack into the trunk. “Sophia doing all right?”

“Sure is,” Carol says, as Sophia gets into her seat in the back of the minivan. Kids. They never like to stick around for these boring adult conversations. “Hell of a lot better now that Ed’s out of the picture.”

Rick snorts and fits the milk in beside the canned soups. “I bet. How’d the hearing go?”

Turns out, Ed’s just been successfully indicted for domestic abuse, and there’s gonna be a juried trial coming up soon. _And_ the judge’s already signed the restraining order.

“...Sounds like it’s turning out just about perfect.” Much better than he could’ve imagined, really.

“Only because you helped,” Carol points out. “I wouldn’t have even reported anything to the police that night, if you hadn’t heard something and knocked on our door.”

Rick shifts his weight. He remembers the way Carol’d kept her coat and scarf on in the precinct that first night, even though it was hot as hell outside. He remembers the way she’d glared at him when he’d suggested filing another restraining order. He remembers the way she’d hunched over, like she’d gotten a broken rib.

He remembers hoping beyond hope that he might change her mind, and quietly despairing that no matter what he tried, he didn’t have the power to truly fix this.

Only Carol did.

“You did all the hard parts. I just did my job, got you started.”

“Well, then, you do your job pretty damn well,” Carol teases. She shuts the trunk with a click and gets in her car. “Thank you, officer.”

“No problem, ma’am,” Rick says, and says goodbye. Carol sends him a wave, and from the backseat, Sophia shyly waves, too. Rick waves back with a smile.

-

He runs into some ex-military type named Abraham in front of the drugstore, who’s heard about the Peletiers and gruffly tries to connect with him through small talk with something about ‘being a man,’ which evidently has something to do with Abraham’s eccentric hobby of collecting firearms and how Rick’s Colt Python is a ‘goddamn masterpiece.’ Rick thanks him and talks guns for a minute with him, which has Abe beaming and offering to take him to a nearby shooting range sometime for a good night out, with beer and some ‘manly bonding’ afterwards.

Rick’s... not sure if Abe’s asking him out on a date or not. He has a weird feeling he’s just been casually propositioned to have wild, drunken sex in the back of a bar. Possibly involving guns.

Abe guffaws, and claps him on the shoulder. “Nah, bud, I’ve got a woman. Not that you’re not a goddamn masterpiece yourself; bet you’d be a firecracker in the sack. Just sayin’, us men, it’s fun to go have a manly night out together now and then.”

Rick smiles weakly and agrees.

Outside the bookstore, the Samuels sisters try to sell him what sounds like an intimidating amount of Girl Scout cookies before he cracks and sends in an order for five boxes, and Abuela Gutierrez and her nursing home friends interrogate him about whether or not he has enough love in his life. One of them - Abuela Martinez - volunteers one of her daughters for a blind date. When Rick refuses, she volunteers one of her nephews. The abuelas all laugh when he blushes and tries to awkwardly cut this line of inquiry off with a non-sequitur.

“You can’t hide from us matchmakers forever, Officer,” Abuela Gutierrez teases. “We’ll get you to fall for someone, one of these days.”

Rick shakes his head with a smile and walks on. The abuelas cheerfully wave him goodbye as he crosses the street.

-

Rick is passing an alleyway when he catches something strange in the corner of his eye - the outline of a man. A stranger.

His breath stops, and he comes to a standstill. He turns, and -

It’s not the smiling man from before. No. It’s a homeless man in ratted layers, sitting curled up against the brick wall near a large green dumpster and staring at his shoes.

Rick inhales deeply, relieved. Not the smiling man. Not a hallucination.

Thank god.

Still. The man looks to be in a bad way. Black male, late thirties or early forties, malnourished and dirty. He’s got no socks, and he looks cold, even though it’s so hot Rick’s sweating a bit just from walking around; his wrists are bare from his shirt sleeves being two inches too short, except for a small number of stringed bracelets. Soles of his shoes are practically falling off, and his head’s hanging like he’s been recently defeated and soundly disappointed by life. Rick’s thinking of sending another person in need to Sasha Williams’ door.

“Sir?”

There’s no response. The homeless man doesn’t even move a muscle, keeping his head down and his fingers tangled together. Rick wonders for a moment if he’s hard of hearing. Rick tries again. “Sir,” he says firmly. He takes a small step into the alleyway. “I’m a police officer.”

“M’not doin’ nothin’ wrong,” the man mumbles suddenly. “Not doin’ nothing to nobody, can’t force me to – ”

“Not forcing you to do anything,” Rick says in an even tone he’s been perfecting for a decade and a half. The more controlled he seems, the more he won’t come off as a potential threat. “You all right?”

The homeless man peers up at him. Suspicious, just like any old stranger had looked at him when he was a beat cop back in Atlanta. It’s not pleasant, but at least it’s familiar.

“...Why you wanna know?”

“Because,” Rick says carefully, and tries not to give off a serial killer vibe, “I haven’t seen you ‘round here before. I got a good place for you to go, if you want. Free showers, beds. You interested?”

The man stares at him. He’s silent. Unresponsive.

It’s not uncommon. Homeless people survive on the streets with often nothing more than a healthy suspicion of everyone around them. He doesn’t take it personally.

“It’s the town’s homeless shelter. Lemme give you directions.” He pulls his notebook and pen out of his front shirt pocket, and scribbles down the address and a little map on how to get there. Then he writes down the town’s volunteer doctor information, just in case his hunch was right and this man’s come down with something nasty. “I also got a doctor around here that’d treat you for free, if you got anything needs treating. I put his phone number at the bottom, you can call from the shelter or from the library down the street.”

Rick rips out the page, folds it in half, and holds it out.

The man looks at him instead of taking it. “What’s your name?” he asks, and his voice sounds calmer than before. Less on edge.

“Rick. Rick Grimes.”

His eyes flick down to the note in Rick’s hand.

“Bob Stookey,” he says, like it’s something precious he’s giving Rick to hold fast, and takes the note.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Stookey,” Rick says. “See you ‘round town.”

He heads out before Bob Stookey starts to wipe the tears away from his eyes. Sometimes, it’s better to help people keep their pain private. Lets them hold on to something; pride, maybe. Rick can understand that.

-

Rick walks into T’s Diner and orders coffee and doughnuts for the station. Maggie smiles at him, says it won’t be too long, and goes to the back. He takes his regular booth for the wait. There’s some catchy song playing over the speakers, and his leg starts jiggling to the beat.

That’s when Glenn comes out of the kitchen, making a beeline for him holding a cardboard box.

Rick smiles, fondly remembering that little box of poppyseed muffins that had mysteriously appeared on his desk. “’Lo there.”

“Howdy, there, Clint Eastwood,” Glenn says, trying out his best cowboy twang and a funny-looking swagger as he tips his non-existent hat. “Got your doughnuts here. Baker’s dozen. With a few extra thrown in, just because.”

“Thank you, Glenn,” Rick says. Looks like Glenn’s got all Morgan’s favorites in there. Bear claws, Boston Cremes, jelly filled, double chocolate twists. Andrea’s coffee-flavored doughnuts are in the corner together, and there’s even a strawberry sprinkled one, which Rick knows is for Martinez. “Morgan’ll sure appreciate it.”

Glenn snorts. “He appreciates them so much, he’s almost single-handedly funding the bakery. Tell him to lay off the clichés, he might lose some weight.”

Rick laughs. Morgan does go a little crazy on the sugar. Specially those cream-filled ones. Something about his wife and son putting him on a strict diet for his high cholesterol. “I would, but I’d kind of like to keep my job.”

“Fair enough. At least you get dental, I guess. You’ll need it, with all that sugar.”

“Says the baker.”

“Damn right,” Glenn says smugly. Maggie walks up behind him. “We bakers, we – ”

Maggie chooses that moment to smack Glenn in the face with a wet washcloth.

Glenn splutters, “Maggie!”

She sets the coffees in their tray on the table. “Your coffees.” Then Maggie says saccharinely, with an impressively raised eyebrow and her hands on her hips, “And what are you still doing out here, hm? I thought there was something ‘delicate’ in the oven?”

“Shit,” Glenn swears before he runs back to the kitchen, bringing chaos in his wake. Rick’s pretty sure he just took down a whole shelf of metal cooking utensils, just going from the clanging.

Rick slides out of the booth and fits the box of doughnuts in the crook of his arm and holds the coffee tray in his hand.

“When are you gonna give that boy a break?” Rick asks.

“Maybe when he finally asks me out on a date.” Maggie sniffs. “Been waitin’ long enough. Now, you just gonna stand around, or are you gonna take those back to the station?”

“Right after I stop by the Tower on 5th,” Rick promises as he steps out the door. The bell rings as he thanks her.

“Now get goin’! Don’t let them coffees go cold!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It should only take a minute to walk down to Tower Beer and head back to the station. Coffee’ll hold on ‘til then, Rick thinks.

(It doesn’t.)

-

The sign outside Tower Beer is flipped to ‘Open,’ and the door swings open with a ring when Rick pushes it. He walks in, and the store’s shelves are full of six packs and kegs, but there’s no one there manning the till. Seems a little odd. Unlocked, unmanned, stocked full...

“Sir,” Rick calls out. It meets only silence. “Mr. Jenner?”

Rick sets down the box of doughnuts and the tray of coffees on the counter. From what he can see, the counter’s clear. Nobody is behind it, no traces of blood either. Rick does think the beer bottles scattered on the ground here and there are a flag for concern, especially the one that’s been knocked over and spilled out onto the wooden floor, but it points to more of a drunken evening phone call rather than something more sinister.

“Mr. Jenner,” Rick calls again.  “This is the police, here to talk to you about your call last night and to address any concerns you may have.”

Again, nothing.

Rick’s fingers drum on the counter. He has to be here. The store’s front door is open, and there’s a beat-up Volvo parked in the employee’s only spot right in front. Rick’s starting to think Jenner went on a pretty rough bender last night and never locked up. He might still be passed out somewhere. “Mr. Jenner, I know you’re here. Your car is still outside on the street.”

There’s a door to a back room behind the counter. Some kind of storage place. He could be in there. Rick steps behind the counter and notices the door’s already open. By a couple of inches, actually. He reaches for the handle before -

Oh.

The heavy-duty lock’s been broken.

Looks like it was severely impacted until it gave. It gives Rick an odd shiver to see it all bludgeoned and cracked - reminds him a little too much of the hacked-up wooden doors over at Pete Dolgan’s place. It’s probably not anything close to that situation, though; maybe someone broke in and robbed the back room. Still, could be a crime scene. Could be, the perps are sleeping off the beers they smash-and-grabbed back there.

Rick pulls his sidearm and pushes the door forward with the barrel.

The rusted hinges of the door creak as it slides open, and -

“Oh my god,” Rick breathes. He takes an aborted step back, like if he walks far enough away it’ll just disappear.

Rick stares at the body. The blood’s spread out to cover almost the entire floor, and it’s tacky and dry like it’s been there for hours and hours.

(It has been.)

Mr. Jenner - or, the person Rick assumes was Jenner - he’s - well. Looks like he’s blown his own brains out. There’s an illegally modified sawed-off shotgun laying on the body, pointed at where the head used to be, and a blue-tinged finger still gripping the trigger in rigor mortis. There’s bits and pieces of flesh and blood pasted and dried on the wall behind him.

Jesus.

He radios it in. “Dispatch, this is Grimes. We’ve got a 10-44 here at the Tower Beer on 5th, do you copy?”

“ _Shit_ ,” Martinez exclaims. He asks Rick if they need an ambulance, but -

“No,” Rick cuts him off, voice a little grittier than normal. “No, no 10-102 necessary.” Then he orders out the coroner instead.

The precinct’s there in record time, casing the place. Rick tries to answer questions, but even he can tell he’s a little too shook up at the moment. Morgan sends him back to the station, and he goes without arguing.

Rick somehow remembers to pick up the coffee and doughnuts from off the counter as he makes his way back.

-

Jesus, what a week.

First a twisted Criminal Minds-worthy murder, now a strange arguable suicide. And both with violent break-ins.

It’s weird.

 _Very_ weird.

-

Rick’s wheels start really turning again a few hours later. He thinks the worst of the shock’s worn off. At least his heart’s beating at a normal pace again.

He downs the dregs of his cold coffee and heads for Morgan’s office. He’s somehow been assigned this case, even though he thought for sure Morgan would force him to take a long leave of absence instead, and he’s got to take statements from Morgan and Martinez about Jenner’s phone call.

-

Later, he’s listening to the dispatch recording of the call itself, and the spooked looks on both their faces had made more and more sense the more he hears.

“ – _Sir. Mr. Jenner. Please calm down_ ,” Morgan says.

“ _You don’t understand_ ,” Jenner snarls back. “ _None of you do, you’re all blind, you don’t see what I see, you don’t think there’s anything out there, oh, all sorts of things are, one of them was after her, too, and one of them’s after me now –_ ”

“ _There’s nobody after you that wants your brain, sir, nobody’s after you_ – ”

Jenner laughs, high-pitched and reedy. “ _Tell that to_ him.” There’s a heavy thunk. “ _That’s him, that’s him, he won’t stop until he has my brain_.”

“ _Sir_ – ”

“ _My brain, my brain, he’s, my brain, he wants it, my brain, he’s gonna get my brain, no, no, my brain, my brain, it’s my_ brain – ”

“ _Jenner, nobody is gonna get your brain. You hear me? Nobody_.”

There’s a small silence. A crackle. Another thump. Maybe two.

“ _Sir? You there_?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Jenner replies, and Rick’s senses go a little haywire at the change in his tone. He’s too calm, all of a sudden. Like he’s made a decision. “ _Yeah. I hear you_.”

“ _You understand now? You know nobody’s gonna get your brain? We on the same page_?”

“ _Nobody’s gonna get my brain_ ,” Jenner repeats serenely. “ _Nobody. It’s gonna be all right_. _It’s all gonna be all right_.”

“ _Good, this is good. Okay, sir, if you can, I want you to_ – ”

The line cuts off, and there’s static.

Rick stops the tape. Jesus Christ. That must be moments before Jenner had loaded his shotgun and pulled the trigger. He hopes Morgan isn’t taking this on like it’s his fault; the guy was clearly a little off.

He presses rewind.

-

So.

From what Rick can piece together, Jenner was paranoid and prone to episodes where he fell into strong delusions.

Martinez had said in his statement that he ascribed those delusions to the death of Jenner’s wife some years before, where she’d been hit on State Road 19 by a semi-truck around four in the morning on a Tuesday. Rick’s pulled up Mrs. Jenner’s incident report, and it seems like she had been much the same way - as she laid dying, she’d told the truck driver she’d gotten away from ‘them,’ and that she’d known all along ‘they’ were magically hidden nearby. The driver had asked who, and she’d simply said, ‘Tell Ed he was right, they were on one of his corkboards.’

So, Jenner was a conspiracy theorist with his wife, and both seemed to suffer from delusions. The wife used her dying breath to tell Jenner that one of the delusional theories they believed in was true, and claimed it was actually what ended up getting her killed, albeit in a roundabout way.

From the logs, Martinez has spoken with Jenner from the same cell phone number on dispatch six times just this month. Rick goes back further, and Jenner’s number pops up quite a lot. He seems to have called the police at least ten times a month on average, if not more.

Martinez had mentioned some of Jenner’s past theories, things to do with aliens, fairies, et cetera. They’d all been fairly vague descriptions. But this time Martinez had been very clear.

Last night, Jenner was convinced that someone had been after his brain, and that that person was Doctor Frankenstein, holding a knife.

(A knife, just like the man with the smile and the jar with Dolgan’s eyeballs rolling around at the bottom, a sharp surgical knife - )

And Rick knows that that’s insane, knows that it couldn’t have been Frankenstein.

But.

 _But_.

There probably really _was_ someone there last night, banging at the lock on Jenner’s storeroom door, trying to kill him. How else would someone explain the broken steel lock?

He says as much to Morgan, and practically sees the weight of his words fall on Morgan’s soul, sees the thoughts take shape in his guilty mind. If Morgan had just taken Jenner seriously, if he’d just sent someone out there to check on him, if he’d just -

But it’s over and done now, and the station’s not gonna run itself.

Morgan sends Rick off to a late lunch.

-

Rick goes through the motions. Says hi to Maggie, eats his usual, pays his bill at the register.

As he leaves and walks down the street back to the station, he steadfastly ignores the outline of a man with a knife in the store windows he passes. Hershel had said it might pop up again.

Nothing is the matter.

(Nothing at all.)

He sees it even back inside the station, right in the corner of his eye, right in the reflection of the glass front door.

He pretends he hasn’t, says “Afternoon,” to Martinez, and moves for his desk.

He doesn’t get there quite fast enough, though.

“Andrea,” Rick says politely.

“Rick,” she says just as politely. She doesn’t move out of his way.

A moment later, Andrea crumples a bit and says, “Okay, look, I just wanted to talk to you for a second about the basement case, but I’d understand if you didn’t want to because of... today.”

Rick doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know _what_ to say.

Her eyes track over his face. “Look, I just... Don’t you think it’s weird? Another fatality, two days later?”

Rick sighs and steps around her to sit in his chair. More weird than she knows. “It is. And the more evidence I get, the weirder _it_ gets.”

Andrea sits on the corner edge of his desk, the only cleared off spot available. “I’m not saying these cases have the same... cause,” she says carefully. “But...”

“But there’s a high chance they’re connected,” Rick finishes. “Fits of paranoia, locked rooms, gory deaths, suspiciously close timeframe...”

Andrea nods, glancing at the ground. He sees the shame in the lines of her face, and doesn’t like it. He feels like officers should be able to trust each other, to ask for help when they need it. Even if he’s really leery of working on this particular case.

Rick picks up Dolgan’s file. He reminds himself that yes, he’s going to do this. Even if it makes him see things later, this is his job. He’s here to help. Rick opens it up and cards through the crime scene photos. Then he flips it shut and tucks it away in his bag.

“I can’t promise you anything,” Rick warns. “All I’m gonna do is take it home tonight and take a look at it, that’s all. See how this basement thing stacks up against the storeroom thing.”

“Understood,” Andrea says, sliding off the desk and back onto her feet with a shrug. “Connecting cases is always a long shot.”

“Yeah,” Rick murmurs. The longest.

-

The moment Rick’s been dreading since he walked out of Tower Beer’s front door comes along near the end of the workday.

Morgan is standing there by Rick’s desk with a mug of coffee in one hand.

Shit.

“Morgan.”

“Rick.”

They stare at each other.

“I’m,” Morgan starts and stops. He looks sad. “No easy way to say this, I guess, so.”

“What?” Maybe Rick assumed too quickly what this was gonna be about. No easy way to say this? That’s pretty much standard code for ‘we’re sorry for your loss.’ Did Carl - or... maybe Lori - ? “What happened?”

Morgan waves a hand. “No, it’s not anything you’re thinking. Your family’s fine, no major disasters or emergencies.”

“Then... what is it?” he asks.

Morgan hesitates.

“Morgan. Whatever you came here to say, say it now.”

Morgan shakes his head with a frustrated little sigh. “Fine, you stubborn asshole. I... I just talked to Hershel.”

Rick knew it. He _fucking_ knew it. There’s a beat where Rick’s anger rises so fast and so strong that it chokes up his words.

“Why,” Rick finally says coldly. Thinks about how Morgan had said, _can’t have any trigger-happy cops on the payroll_. Rick’d thought that it was gonna be okay, that Morgan and Hershel understood that he needed this job, needed the work, and wasn’t about to lose control over himself again because he was fucking _dealing with it_. Clearly, he was wrong to trust in that. In them. “You think I’m not up for the job? Think I’m cracking up?”

“Look, Rick, you know what happens up there when you see bad shit on the job,” Morgan says defensively, gesturing to his head. “Everyone’s got it a little bit, you just have it a little worse, okay? Yesterday was bad, and... And then, after what you stumbled onto today, with Jenner, I...”

“You didn’t want me to go batshit,” Rick says dully. “I get it. I’d lock me up, too. Can’t have a crazy ‘trigger-happy cop’ on the payroll.”

He thinks that’s going to be it, thinks Morgan is gonna shrink back a little bit at his own words being parroted back at him, and admit that maybe this isn’t working out, maybe Rick really should consider resigning for the good of the department, maybe it’s _safer_ if he just -

But then, Morgan makes a particularly disgusted, frustrated sound. “No, you dumbass, I want you to be _okay_! Happy and well-adjusted and healing and _all that shit_!” Morgan growls.

He leans in and stabs at Rick’s chest with a finger. “I know you’re fucked in the head, and lemme be clear, here, I’m not talking about the made-up shit you see, I’m talking ‘bout _you_ , fuckin’ _Rick Grimes_. _You_ are fucked in the head. After what you saw today, fuck, if _anyone_ saw it, and I don’t care how sparkly clean the fuck’s brain was beforehand, I’d send _any_ cocky goddamn cop I knew _straight_ to the goddamn couch. So get over yourself and your fucking complex, whatever the hell it is, and get over to Hershel’s and talk to him before I beat in your skull for being so thick-headed, so help me god.”

Oh, so now _Rick’s_ the thick-headed one? Rick’s got a _complex_? Rick’s _fucked in the head_?

Ears ringing so loud it’s like there are emergency alarms going off, Rick stands up to his full height, with Morgan’s finger still stabbing into his chest. He can’t take that finger poking him for one more _goddamn_ second - he strikes out and forces Morgan’s whole arm to spin away from him with one savage hit. It feels viciously good for one glorious moment.

Then Morgan stumbles back, turning with the movement, and Rick comes back to himself. Freezes in place.

He just struck his commanding officer in a fit of rage. Right in the bullpen.

Rick Grimes stands there and breathes, because he never thought he’d do something like that in a million years, but here he is, here _Morgan_ is, watching him like he’s a time bomb ticking down to zero.

Morgan’s… just trying to help. He never even hinted at Rick getting taken off the force. Never asked for his gun or badge. Not a thing.

He’s just telling Rick to talk to Hershel, which. Hey. It’s regulation.

“Fine!” Rick bites out, and hears how nasty his voice sounds with an inner cringe. He tries to force it back down to something more professional. “Fine. I’ll go talk to him. Happy?”

“Overjoyed,” Morgan says dryly. “Take the rest of the day off, too, you bitchy workaholic.”

“ _You_ – ”

“Yeah, yeah, keep barking, asshole.” Morgan walks away, sipping at his coffee. His office door slams shut with a loud bang that echoes in the office.

Rick feels like a goddamn teenager, stomping out of the station and not caring how hard the door closes. He’ll definitely be embarrassed about this later, when his head’s cooled off.

(He will be. It’s already agonizing.)

He’s drawing up to his rundown Ford, still stomping as he goes, pulling his keys out of his pocket, about to drive over to Hershel’s, when -

Jesus fuckin’ Christ.

The smiling man with the knife is there, right in the car door’s mirror. He’s right behind Rick, and he’s getting closer.

(Real or unreal?)

Rick tries to go through the reality-testing mantra Hershel’d taught him - do other people see it, do I sense it in only one way or multiple ways, does it make rational sense to be there -

But he can’t focus on the answers to those questions. Not at the moment, when a cold sweat has broken out all over him, not when that knife keeps closing in on him every second he stays in place, and _fuck_ , it’s only maybe ten feet away now -  

“Officer Grimes,” a calm, familiar voice suddenly says from behind him.

Rick swivels around, and Bob Stookey is there, standing in the alleyway right alongside the station’s parking lot.

“Uh,” Rick says. “Mr. Bob Stookey.”

“That’s me,” Bob says companionably. He steps up to Rick’s side, and claps a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “See you’ve got some problems, there.”

You got no idea, Rick thinks wryly to himself, eyes flicking to check on the man in the mirror and back. It seems to have stopped in its tracks. For whatever reason, Rick can’t tell.

Rick fakes a laugh. He hopes he pulls it off and Stookey thinks he’s a perfectly normal human being, but he knows that’s a pretty big stretch at this point. “I guess I got a few, yeah. Just like anyone.”

“Hm,” Bob says noncommittally. “Sure.”

Then, Bob’s eyes move away from Rick’s, and they land right behind him. Right where the smiling man is standing.

He sees it, Rick thinks with the dazed hope of someone that was almost convinced they were mortally wrong. I’m not crazy, Bob Stookey sees it, I know he does, _he sees it too_ –

Then Bob’s eyes are back on Rick, and there’s a sad smile building up on the edges of his mouth.

“I got some of my own, too,” Bob says easily. “But I think you could use this a little more than me right now, huh?”

He unties a bracelet from his wrist, one with two shining dimes tied to it. Rick stares at it uncomprehendingly.

“Take it,” Bob says, dead serious. “It’ll help.”

When Rick doesn’t immediately move to take it, Bob presses the bracelet further forward into his space. And y’know, Bob’s eyes are clear and honest. Focused. Grounding. Rick could do with some of that right about now.

“Humor me,” Bob says in an undertone.

Rick… Rick doesn’t know what’s going on, doesn’t know what’s real or unreal right now. But humoring Bob Stookey?

That, he can do.

He holds his wrist out and lets Bob tie the string bracelet on. Bob forgoes a regular knot, and instead knots up the string so much Rick’s viscerally reminded of the Boy Scouts’ extensive knot encyclopedia. Bob nods when he’s done, and pulls out of Rick’s personal space.

The metal of the dimes tingles on Rick’s skin.

Bob’s eyes flick back to the smiling man before he looks back at Rick and smiles brightly. “See you ‘round, officer.”

“You too, Mr. Stookey,” Rick says, more off-kilter than he’s ever been, watching as Bob walks away. He glances back behind him, but all trace of the man with the knife is gone.

Well.

Good thing Rick’s already on his way over to the psychiatrist.

-

“I talked to Sheriff Jones earlier today,” Hershel says pleasantly.

Rick snorts. “Yeah, so I heard.”

“Seems to think you’ve had it rough. All the fatalities you’ve stumbled upon recently, the hallucination the day before yesterday...”

Rick clears his throat. “Actually. Uh. I had another one today. After the... After I found Mr. Jenner in the storeroom.”

Hershel blinks. “Oh, my. What did you see?”

“Same one as yesterday. A man floating behind me, smiling, holding a knife.”

Hershel hums and writes something down on his notepad. “Okay. Same one... interesting.”

Rick sits back further in his chair, head still spinning with that reality-tilting moment where Bob Stookey stepped in. “Interesting’s one word for it,” he says heavily.

“What’s another one?”

Well, seeing as Rick’s entire world was just shaken to the core... “Maybe... Uh. Terrifying?”

“Because you don’t usually see the same things?”

They talk about how clear and sharp this hallucination is, how different it is from his usual. How it reminds Rick of how he’d seen Lori, before. How odd it is.

Hershel sits back in his chair, too, and strokes at his beard. “So, you’re having a similar episode. Do you know what triggered the first one?”

Rick shakes his head. “Can’t be sure what it was,” he says. “At the time... Well, uh. There was a lot going on. The divorce, the rehabilitation, the, uh.”

“Sexuality crisis?” Hershel supplies kindly.

Rick fakes a cough. He regrets telling Hershel about that one. “Yeah. That. So. Lots of stressful things were going on. Can’t really pin it down.”

“Maybe... it was _all_ of it,” Hershel says thoughtfully. “Are there a lot of things going on right now, too? Is that why?”

Rick rubs his face and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s got a headache coming on.

“...No?” he says uncertainly. Lately, he’s been… well, he’d thought he was almost happy. “The only thing that’s been happening lately are the gory cases. The basement and the storeroom. Two days ago, and then today.”

Hershel cocks his head to the side and frowns. “Huh. And how many little episodes were you having before yesterday?”

Rick spreads his arms out to the sides. “None! Absolutely none. They slowed down after I started the meds, and eventually stopped pretty much altogether. Before yesterday I hadn’t seen one in weeks. I thought...” He shakes his head. He’d thought he was really getting better. So much for that. “Never mind.”

Hershel sets down his notepad and pen on his writing table, and leans forward. He’s watching Rick intently. Rick knows what’s about to come out of his mouth.

“Maybe,” Hershel says gently. “We should consider having you take some time off from police work, to make sure it’s not related.”

Rick sighs. “Knew you’d say that.”

The session wraps up, after that. Nothing left to talk about.

-

So, Rick heads back to his ramshackle old house with forced indefinite medical leave from work hanging over his head.

He makes spaghetti, just for the hell of it. Carl always liked his spaghetti, said it made him feel better even when everything else sucked at school. Maybe Rick could have some of that spaghetti-bourne comfort this time.

It tastes good, but that’s not really enough to lift Rick’s mood. He’s too busy thinking about later, and about the hell of boredom he’s gonna have to suffer through. Worse, the lack of purpose. He’ll be stuck in this house, with nothing to do but think about what he’s done and torture himself with memories. It’s like he’s been imprisoned, without the prison guards.

Rick makes up some decaf and sits on the couch, mindlessly losing himself in whatever’s on TV. Flips from one show to the next, whatever looks interesting. He finally settles on some narrated documentary on the History Channel.

Eventually, the show’s over, and Rick startles back to reality from whatever daze he was in. He half-assedly rinses off his coffee mug in the kitchen sink, sets it down, and heads upstairs to crash for the night.

He’s hoping for a dreamless sleep.

-

Yeah. He’s not that lucky.

There’s Rick’s father, sitting there at his desk in the study of Rick’s childhood house, shaking his head. His mom is crying in the next room, and Rick remembers this, it was the most mortifying moment he can remember from elementary school, except he’s not wearing shorts and a T-shirt, he’s wearing his regulation uniform without his gun or badge. He tries to explain himself, but the words echo and fade into nothing as his dad keeps shaking his head and his mom keeps crying her eyes out. They can’t hear him, and Rick tries to shout it louder, _louder_ , until the sight of his dad fades into Morgan, sitting at his desk in the station, shaking his head from side to side as Rick stares at the mess of a window he just shot to hell. Morgan tells him to leave, tells his gun to let his bullets fall to the floor with little clinks, and before Rick can walk out the door and leave, the station leaves him. He’s left alone at his empty desk, and there’s nothing else for him. His ammo falls to the floor from his gun, but it doesn’t stop after the chamber’s empty. More and more bullets fall out. It sounds like rain, the more they fall. He thinks of going home, but he remembers he can’t, for some reason. Why can’t he? Is Lori still mad at him for something? He thought she’d gotten over that. He was sure she did.

Then his dreams shift, and Rick dreams of mirrors, of reflections. His car mirror, the windows at the station. He looks in, and there’s the hallucination, the lurking man. He’s following him with his knife and smile, with his jar of eyeballs on a shelf sitting next to another jar with a brain inside it. Jenner’s, he thinks vaguely. But Jenner destroyed his brain, Rick remembers. Made sure to shoot his shotgun shells right through it.

But, anyway, the man’s there, in his dream. Rick seems to be wherever the man’s hideout is, where he goes between kills. Where he goes to hide. Rick can’t really see what’s around him, just patches and pieces of a room. It’s dark. Rick feels trapped. He can’t seem to look away from the man’s glittering knife.

The man’s smile twists into a snarl, the knife comes down at him, and -

Rick falls into darkness again.

Then there’s a whisper of a sound, and Rick tries to find where it’s coming from. He’s back in Atlanta, he thinks, in the edges far from the city where farmland starts to spread out across the horizon, but he’s not sure, and there’s a rustle of grass and a light hiss.

He knows that sound. It’s a snake. Is _he_ the snake?

No, he turns and there it is, sliding its way through the tall grass. It’s got a smile on its face, just like the smiling man. Stretched out and scary as all hell. For some reason, it has human teeth. Rick didn’t know snakes could smile like that.

It runs a sliver of fear through him, and he moves hastily backwards, trying to get away from it.

The movement makes the snake spot him, though, and it changes directions, going right for him. Rick stays there, transfixed, like he’s been hypnotized. The snake charmer gets caught by the snake, a thought that pops up out of nowhere reverberating through Rick’s mind like a universal truth.

Just as it bites at him, Rick wakes up with a sharp pain to his wrist.

It was just a dream.

Rick sits up on his mattress, rubbing at his wrist with a frown. Must’ve gotten a mosquito bite, just now.

He turns over to get back to sleep, but then...

Then his bedroom door creaks, and Rick’s head shoots up. There’s something moving there, shuffling right outside his door, he can _hear_ it -

Rick quietly gets to his feet and stealthily makes his way to the crack in the door. He peers out carefully, expecting a mouse.

That’s no mouse, Rick thinks stupidly to himself.

That’s not a mouse, it’s a man.

A man the size of a mouse.

A tiny man is standing there in a vest and ripped up jeans, maybe a couple inches tall at most, tossing a similarly tiny crossbow to the ground and pulling out a hunting knife just in time to somehow successfully parry an incoming snake’s full-body lunge. “Ha,” the tiny man mutters in his high-pitched voice, as the snake barrels into the wall. “Take that, bitch.”

The snake comes back for another hit, eyes flashing green in the dark, and the man breathes a hurried, “C’mon, come on, come on, _come on_ \- ” as it lunges again.

The knife’s buried in the snake’s brain a moment later, and together they fall to the floor. The man looks a little shaken, but he crawls out from under the carcass and wipes blood off on his pants. He breathes out a high-pitched little sigh, before grabbing the knife and tugging it out of the snake’s mouth. Then he turns towards the crossbow he’d tossed aside, aiming to pick it up, before he stops dead in his tracks.

Then the man slowly looks up, and up, and up, and up, until he’s looking right at Rick. He’s got blue eyes and shaggy brown hair, and he’s so dirty he’d rival a pig in a mud puddle.

Rick stares back dumbly.

What the _hell_?


	4. ánoixi (spring) part i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read Cursed, the first part of this series, this part might not make complete sense to you. There's a lot of buildup on the magic, Daryl, and the villain that Rick just doesn't think about or see. So, yeah, maybe read that one first? Or not, it's cool. You do you.

He stares at the tiny man, and the tiny man stares back. He has a strange feeling that this tiny man sees Rick just like Rick sees him: impossible, fantastical, part of a dream. Almost like Rick’s hallucination is hallucinating _Rick._

Rick leans forward almost unconsciously, trying to peer a little closer, to see where the broad strokes fall into gaps where detail should be. It’s something Hershel’d told him helps, catching the limitations of imagination to viscerally prove the difference between real and unreal.

But... the closer he gets, the more detail he sees.

There’s stains and rips in the tiny man’s old faded jeans - it’s like they’ve been worn so long they’ve molded to him. And there’s a vest, a leather one, that Rick would guess a biker would wear, if they were smaller than a doll. And weirdly enough, the shirt the tiny man is wearing is stitched in one spot with a thick white thread that looks like dental floss. If the man was scaled up to normal size, he’d look completely normal, except for that one thread.

Jesus, there’s even grease collected in the man’s hair, and a thin film of sweat on his skin. Rick looks a little closer and yeah, the little guy’s eyes are flinty and blue. Rick can even see him _breathing_ -

The floor creaks under Rick’s weight as he shifts even closer, and, oops.

That spooks the little guy. He’d been staring back at Rick, but the sudden sound makes him start in surprise and scamper off down the hallway.

Rick blinks and stares at the space the little man had been standing.

There’s a crossbow and a dead snake still sitting there on the floor, left behind.

Then he hears soft little thuds as the little guy leaps down the stairs one by one, and Rick realizes he’s got a runner.

“Hey!” Rick says indignantly, and follows after him. He sees the guy jump down the last stair and dart out of sight towards the kitchen.

Rick moves a little faster, skipping every other step, and rounds into the kitchen. Rick can hear faint sounds of a flurry of anxious movement before it settles into silence.

Hiding. Hm.

Rick’s eyes are drawn towards the one cabinet door that’s slightly ajar. It’s only cleared about an inch or so, but that’d be more than enough for the little guy to squeeze his way through.

That’s gotta be his safe haven.

Rick’s pretty glad he’s got bare feet right now. He slips across the smooth floor as quietly as he can, right up to the cabinets, and slowly climbs on top of the counter above them. It’s then that Rick realizes he has nothing to catch the little guy with. He furtively looks around him; there’s a dirty plate and a few utensils in the sink, a plastic cup -

That’ll work. He leans over to grab it, careful not to rustle the other stuff sitting there.

Then Rick settles in and waits, keeping a careful watch on the cracked cabinet door. Minutes tick by on the clock, and yet Rick stays where he is. He’s got practice with stakeouts; the trick is to clear your mind and focus only on the target.

It’s quiet except for the hum of the fridge.

He listens closely until he hears a stirring of activity. Sounds like a mouse - Rick’s had mice before. But there’s something a little different about it - no small squeaking, no scrabbling. Just a slight, muted movement. If he hadn’t been listening closely, Rick would’ve never heard it at all.

A tiny head peeks its way out of the cabinet door and glances from side to side. The kitchen seems to check out as clear, eventually, because the little guy leans out a little further and sighs in some kind of relief.

Before the little guy can retreat back into his little haven, Rick makes his move.

He jumps off the counter pressing down a palm on the tiled surface with one hand, the other wielding the cup, and covers the guy with the plastic cup. Just like he would catch a spider. The little guy flips and hits the floor with a little thunk, and groans with his high little voice. He lays there for a second, before rolling over to get on his knees and laying a hand on the inside of the cup for support.

Then Rick flips the cup over in one quick motion.

“Fuck,” the little guy complains as he tumbles to the bottom. Rick lifts up the cup and puts it on the kitchen table before sitting down and studying the man inside it.

The little guy is clutching at his body and grimacing.

Rick feels a stab of guilt at that. What if he accidentally hurt the little guy by throwing him around the place?

Little guy’s eyes are screwed shut, and his body’s angled away from Rick like he’s in the middle of an interrogation. Which, Rick thinks, is actually not too far off.

See, Rick’s gone over all the tricks of the trade with Hershel in the last couple sessions. He’s talked about reality testing for hours, about all the different ways to confirm real or unreal.

And the little guy in his plastic cup isn’t helping.

Usually, a hallucination is fleeting. It’s only there in his peripherals, or only there for a second or two before it’s gone. This little guy has been in front of him for at least ten minutes now, and hasn’t poofed out of existence so far as Rick can tell.

Usually, a hallucination is vague and dreamlike. Blurry, almost. This little guy is clear as day, and the tiniest details are there that Rick would never think about. Like the angel wings sewn in on the back of his tiny leather biker vest.

Usually, a hallucination is only through one or two senses. Sight and hearing, most often.

And yet...

This little guy… Rick can see him, hear him… Rick can even _smell_ him. Hell, he felt the weight of the guy when he carried the cup.

Rick frowns down at him, and honestly doesn’t know where to go from here. Rationally, it doesn’t make sense. A four-inch tall man in his house? Hershel’d agree, it just isn’t normal.

But... all Rick’s senses are telling him that this little guy is real.

Hell, all of Hershel’s reality testing exercises do, too.

And earlier, Rick thinks… Earlier, Bob Stookey had seen the smiling man with the knife.

Yeah.

Rick doesn’t know what to think.

The little guy just lays there, eyes shut and face pained, and Rick just stares at him.

Finally, Rick deflates with a sigh. He feels uncomfortable, like he’s going to accidentally say something too loud for the little guy to hear, or accidentally hurt the little guy again if he’s not careful. But he’s gotta find out the truth somehow.

So, Rick clears his throat and says in a low voice, “Now, I could just be seein’ things again, but if I can see you, hear you, feel you, and you don’t disappear, well. That’s a little more hard proof than I’m used to. So much that – ” _I’m already halfway there to believing you’re actually real_ , he doesn’t say. “Point is, I don’t know if you’re real or not, so I’m gonna do the decent thing and treat you like you are. Even if you are, uh, impossible.”

He pauses, expecting the little guy to pipe up with his reedy high voice.

The little guy stays absolutely silent, doesn’t move a muscle. Just keeps his eyes shut and his body stiffly in place.

Rick wonders if the little guy even heard him. Or if _he_ just didn’t hear the little guy.

He leans a little closer, and -

And the little guy’s head whips up, blue eyes staring at him with absolute animal fear. He’s practically radiating panic, like a deer in the headlights, like -

Like Sophia, staring at him from across the room where her father was being held at gunpoint and her mother was bleeding into the carpet.

Rick leans back slowly, giving the little guy a little space. Hopefully enough to give him a little peace of mind.

It seems to work; the little guy’s body relaxes, and his eyes flick across Rick instead of honing in on one point with supreme focus like his life depends on it.

Rick feels a flush of relief at that. At least he’s not actively terrorizing the little guy.

Still... Little guy’s clearly in pain. He’s clutching at his body, and his face is wracked with lines from the strain of holding himself together.

“You... look hurt,” Rick says measuredly.

The face Little guy makes at Rick then is so unimpressed, it makes Rick burst out with a surprised little laugh.

“Okay, okay. Point taken.” Yeah. Rick was sort of stating the obvious there. “Guess what I was trying to say was... Anything I can do?”

Little guy blinks up at him, looks around the kitchen, and finally shakes his head.

A line creases between Rick’s eyebrows. “Come on,” Rick coaxes. “Some pain medicine? Bandages? Must be something.”

Another headshake. More adamant, this time.

“Stubborn bastard,” Rick mutters almost affectionately under his breath. Just the type of stubborn bastard that Rick recognizes, though, fortunately enough. He crosses his arms and says, “Look, you’re in my custody. Means I have responsibilities over your well-being and respecting your civil rights, and that includes emergency medical care. So. Either you’re indefinitely detained _with_ medical supplies, or without them. Your choice.”

That makes Little guy frown, bite his lip, and finally... nod.

Rick smothers down a triumphant grin and goes to grab his first aid kit from the bathroom.

-

Turns out, Little guy thinks his ribs might be cracked.

Rick winces at that, remembering the way he’d snapped down the cup and the little guy had gone tumbling to the ground. Thankfully, Little guy doesn’t catch it; he’s too focused on carefully wrapping bits of a cotton swab around his torso and pinning it down with Scotch tape.

Rick carefully cuts an ibuprofen pill into smaller and smaller pieces with one of his cheap plastic knives before lowering it into the cup by sliding it down the side with a pinkie. Little guy takes it in both hands like it’s a hamburger and chows it down in a few bites.

Then Rick wonders about the best way to go about watering the little guy, and decides to fill up a spoon and sprinkle water drops down with a finger until the little guy says enough.

It works. Seems like Little Guy is pretty damn thirsty; he gulps down every drop like he’s dying in a desert, and Rick loses count around the fifteenth drop of water before little guy finally does say enough.

Pretty much immediately after that, the little guy curls up in the bottom of the cup and goes straight to sleep.

Rick stares at him for a minute, the tiny mumbling man snoozing in a plastic cup on his kitchen table, before going and grabbing a napkin. He lets it fall into the cup and settle on the little guy like a blanket. Hopefully that’ll keep him warm.

Then he goes and scouts out the second floor, where he finds a teensy crossbow and a very dead snake lying just where they were earlier. He stares at them, and runs a careful finger over the neck of the bow, and pokes a little suspiciously at the belly of the snake. Definitely not plastic, and definitely not human teeth, he notes grimly as more blood squirts out of its lolling mouth and onto the wood floor.

As far as he can tell, they’re real.

Rick grabs them both and heads back downstairs with them. He rinses off the snake to get rid of the blood, then sets them to the side.

Task done, his gaze zones back in on the little guy, who’s still snoozing like a bear in hibernation and hasn’t moved an inch. As real as can be.

Either Rick has gone off the deep end, or is stuck in some sort of dream or coma or something, or -

Or maybe, just maybe, some of the things he’s seeing right now are - impossibly, inexplicably real.

Rick sinks back into his chair, blowing out a long breath. He watches like a sentry, waiting for the moment when the little guy winks out of existence.

(That moment doesn’t come.)

-

Rick starts awake at a thumping sound.

Turns out, his prisoner is escaping. Knocked over the goddamn cup, somehow, and is trying to scuttle across the table to drop over the edge.

Rick acts fast, and gets him back into custody in less than a minute.

“Where were we,” Rick starts dryly. “Okay. Why don’t we set some ground rules. Rule one: no escape attempts. They’ll aggravate your injuries.”

Little guy glares at the ceiling, but doesn’t say anything.

“Rule two: you need anything, you ask. S’long as you cooperate, you’ll get it.”

“Need to not be in this plastic cup,” Little guy mutters sourly.

Rick tamps down a grin. Smartass.

“Now, I got a couple questions for you, and seeing as you been in my house for god knows how long, I’d like you to answer.” Rick holds up the tiniest crossbow he’s ever seen in his life between his thumb and forefinger, and places it carefully on the tabletop. Then he holds up the dead snake the little guy killed, and puts that right next to it. Then he looks at the little guy and asks levelly, “So. What the hell happened last night?”

“Complicated,” Little guy says shortly.

Rick raises an eyebrow. “Try me.”

The guy chews on that for a second. “Fine,” he finally grumbles. “You ain’t gonna believe a word of it, though.”

“I found a miniature man living in my house,” Rick points out. “I think I can suspend some of my disbelief, at least for the time being.”

(At least until he can prove this is all some sort of dream or hallucination. Then, Rick will unsuspend that disbelief so fast, he’ll probably get whiplash.)

Little guy grunts. “Whatever. Don’t matter, I guess.” He pauses - starts staring at the snake, Rick thinks. “Uh... It’s...” He frowns and shakes his head. “It’s... hard to explain.”

Rick’s eyes study him intently. He seems to be telling the truth in that, as far as Rick can tell. “I hear the best place to start is usually the beginning.”

Little guy chews on that for even longer.

“I got shrunk,” the guy grumbles reluctantly. “Was out in the forest, got shrunk, got chased. Ended up here in yer backyard. Had to make do.”

Shrunk? As in, Honey-I-Shrunk-My-Kids shrunk? Rick frowns. For some reason he’d assumed that Little Guy was born that way. “You weren’t always this size?”

The look that gets Rick is so unimpressed, it’s amazing. “No.”

“How – ” _did you get shrunk_ , Rick doesn’t say. He realizes that he doesn’t know if it’s something he should ask. Is it a sensitive topic? Should he not go there? Like how you’re not supposed to dredge up bad memories with war vets by asking about it?

“How did I get shrunk,” Little guy finishes, like he’s heard the question a thousand times and is tired of tiptoeing around it. Rick tries not to wince. “Some asshole did it. ‘S the same asshole from last night, the one who sent in the snake. Prob’ly still out there. You know him.”

Asshole? Sent in the snake? Someone Rick knows?

The more information he gets, the more this is starting to seem more like a fever dream. Narrative seems to be, Asshole is going around shrinking people, then sending in snakes to kill people asleep in their beds. Dream logic. It’s even making a weird sort of sense, which is the worst part. Rick remembers the dream he’d had, with the snake grinning with its human teeth, chasing after him, and it seems to fit together.

And the little guy says Rick knows the perp? Rick is nearing a weird dizziness, trying to take this all in. “I do?”

“Yeah. Creepy smiling dude? Carries a knife around? Floats? Ringin’ any bells?”

Rick goes very, very still.

The man… with the knife.

The one Rick -

The one he’d thought Stookey might have seen, too.

 _That_ man?

The almost-a-hundred-percent-sure-to-be-a-hallucination, _that_ man?

The one the little guy could never have seen, because it was all the way in town and completely separated from anything out here by the house?

 _That man_?

“You – ” Rick stops. There’s no way the little guy could have known about him. No logical way. Not if he was real, anyway. “How do you know about that.”

Little guy eyes him dubiously. “Uh... I just told you, he shrunk me.”

Rick’s ears buzz with a dull dead noise as things lock together into place in his head. Little guy knows about the smiling man because _little guy is a projected hallucination that Rick’s own sick mind is creating_. There’s no other logical explanation for it, and - this proves it.

He’s cracked. Warped. Broken.

Loony. Crazy.

Whatever you wanna call it, that’s what he is.

Rick leaps to his feet and starts pacing around the kitchen like a trapped animal.

“You’re not real,” he says through gritted teeth.

(It’s completely nonsensical, but Rick feels a little betrayed by the little guy for taking him in this long. Making him _doubt_ . He’s just a hallucination, Rick knows that now, but it still pisses him off. Does this mean he’s really angry at himself? This shit is so _complicated_.)  

“I’m making you up. You’re just like the smiling man, you’re – _both_ of you are – I’m not really seeing you, I’m seeing, seeing _things_ , I’m – ”

Rick clenches his fists and stops pacing. He whips around, stares at the little guy. His miniature crossbow, the dead snake. His worried little frown. It doesn’t matter how real the little guy looks, because...

“You’re not real,” Rick says with finality, and moves towards the front door.

He just - needs to get out of here, clear his head to get rid of that nagging feeling that everything he’s seeing is real, maybe turn himself in, drive down to the docs and their psych ward -

“No!” Little guy shouts after him. “Rick, _don’t_ , he’s – it’s – it’s – that smiling asshole is _out there_! And he’s gonna _kill_ you!”

Rick stops with his hand on the doorknob.

He looks back, his glare cold as ice. There’s his absolute proof, right there. Something the little guy could never have known unless he wasn’t real.

“I never told you my name,” Rick says lowly.

Little guy goes absolutely still and silent for about half a second, like he knows just how dangerous Rick is right now. And he probably does, Rick thinks with vague distant humor. He’s a part of me, so he must know.

Rick shifts, turning the knob to the side, and that starts off the little guy again with the same dreamy crap that halfway makes sense. “Wait, just – don’t take the bracelet off, just keep it on, for _fuck’s sake_ – ”

“Shut up,” Rick snarls, and throws the door open and strides out onto the porch. It’s lovely outside. Nothing but green grass and trees, a nice breeze… “Stop lying to me, nothing’s out here, you’re not even real, shut up, shut up, shut _up_ – ”

It’s right about then that the smiling man morphs out of thin air and stabs at his face with his creepy, twisted knife.

“Shit! Oh my g – ” Rick throws up an arm to block, redirecting the curve of the knife to slice right by him, and gets his fist knocked into his own eye for his trouble. Doesn’t get stabbed, though, which is a definite plus. Hand has a cut in it, but the damage is minimal, and -

And the smiling man is suddenly gone again, as if he was never there at all.

Still, Rick staggers back from the momentum and falls to the wooden porch floor with a hard hit to one of his shoulders. Before the smiling man can reappear and try again, Rick wrenches himself back into the front hall with his elbows.

“Shit,” Rick mutters, kicking the door shut as fast as he can.

Silence falls, and Rick’s aching already. He’s probably going to have a black eye, after that hit. And there’s no way he would have given himself that black eye, not without some other force unnaturally pushing his fist into his own face. He felt it, the ripple of muscle, the push of another person. The ache around his socket only continues to prove it.

He lets his head drop to the floor, and groans.

Yeah… he is never, _ever_ , telling Hershel about any of this.

-

Rick cleans up his bleeding hand in the upstairs bathroom with rubbing alcohol, hissing as the burn soaks into the cut. Tapes up soft cotton on the cut on the edge of his hand, makes sure it’ll stay there.

Then he notices the dimes on Stookey’s bracelet have both gone ashy, like they’ve accumulated decades of grime in half a day. He tries pouring some of the rubbing alcohol on them to get some of it off, but even with a fourth of the bottle, the dimes don’t lose a single molecule.

 _Don’t take the bracelet off_ , the little guy had said right before Rick burst out of the front door and straight into the smiling man. _Keep it on_.

And Stookey - when he’d tied it around Rick’s wrist, Stookey had glanced back to look at the smiling man and said, _Take it. It’ll help. Humor me._

If Rick were crazy, or in some crazy world where all this made some sort of sense, he’d almost have to conclude that the silver dimes on the bracelet somehow warded off the smiling man when he got too close.

Rick stares at his own reflection in the dirty mirror. His black eye stares back at him, incontestably real.

(Real or unreal?)

“What the hell,” Rick mutters, and again, more heartfelt, “ _What_ the _hell_.”

One second, he’s sure this is all a dream. The next, he knows it’s all real. Then he’s back to wavering again, and all the whiplash is giving him a nasty goddamn headache. And, quite frankly, it’s really starting to _piss him off_.

His fist suddenly connects with the wooden bathroom doorframe in a loud thunk. Rick closes his eyes and focuses on the pain in his fist until it’s a little easier to breathe again.

It’s okay.

No.

It’s _going_ to be okay.

Rick won’t see-saw like this forever. He’s a police officer. He’ll get to the bottom of this, given enough time and evidence.

And with his temporary suspension from work, Rick thinks a little grimly, he’ll have more than enough time.

-

Rick changes out of his PJs and into jeans and a button-up before going back downstairs to face his little prisoner. He tries to put on some semblance of composure. To act like he’s completely unfazed.

Of course, all that gets him as soon as he sits back down at the kitchen table is a tentative, “You okay?” from the little guy.

Rick doesn’t answer.

“Whatever.” The little guy shrugs it off like he doesn’t give a shit, like he hadn’t been screaming for Rick to stay inside, to keep the bracelet on, only a half hour earlier. He picks at his tiny shirt and stares at the air next to Rick with a faux casual air.

It reminds Rick of some delinquent highschooler in the principal’s office. The bad boy in an eighties movie kind of vibe. It’s funnily endearing.

But Rick’s gotten off track. He’s here for information - he’s here to get this guy to talk. See if he’s real. See if he’s not.

Rick leans in a little closer, peering at the little guy’s face for any tells, and says, “You’re not real.”

Little guy gives him nothing. Just crosses his arms and continues to stare into middle distance.

“You’re not,” Rick says.

Little guy turns his hand over and checks his nails, purposefully ignoring him.

“You’re _not_.” Rick says again.

That third time seems to annoy him a little, just enough to get him to raise an eyebrow and snaps back, “You tryin to convince yourself of that, or are you tryin’ to convince me? Cuz I gotta tell you. Not gonna get too far with that one.”

Rick tenses, trying to keep his face blank, and tries to pick out signs of deception from the guy’s face.

There aren’t any. Not that there would be, if he were a hallucination Rick created. But then again, what real person would respond well to someone telling them they weren’t real? They’d just think the interrogator was an idiot. Just like this little guy thinks Rick is an idiot. Which, honestly, rankles a little bit.

This is going nowhere. What’s the point of asking someone whether they’re real or not? What’s the harm with being honest with this little guy, whether he’s a hallucination or a real person? Either way, Rick doesn’t lose anything because of it.

Rick deflates a little. “To tell you the truth, right now, it’s not getting all that far with me, either.”

Rick pulls the dime bracelet off his wrist, and tosses it onto the tabletop. It settles next to the tiny crossbow and the dead snake.

The little guy peers through the plastic of the cup to get a closer look at it. Rick assumes through some stretch of dream logic that he’s focusing on the ashy grime coating the coins.

“You said a couple things ‘fore I went outside, I think.” Rick tilts his head. “Said he’d be out there. Said he’d try to kill me. And... you said to keep the bracelet on.”

Little guy nods.

Rick eyes him curiously. His prisoner is strangely forthcoming. “You got a reason for knowin’ all that?”

Little guy shrugs.

Rick’s expression hardens. So much for being forthcoming. “So, you ain’t gonna talk now? You were awful eager to before.”

The little guy blinks up at him, seemingly speechless. Rick keeps himself still. Calm and collected. Waits him out.

Finally, the little guy licks his lips and says, “‘M not much of a talker.”

“Well, I’m a helluvva listener,” Rick shoots back. “And I got all day.”

The little guy scoffs, but goes back to silence.

Rick sighs internally. He’d thought they’d already gotten past this point, that the guy was ready to talk. Apparently not. And Rick’s tired of waiting for him. “How much more time you need to finish cookin’ up yer story? Should I put on a timer?”

The little guy blinks up at him. “I ain’t gonna lie to you, I was just...”

“Just what?” Rick snaps.

“Just – ”

“Just?” Rick parrots.

A snarl rises on the little guy’s face at that.

“ _Thinkin’_ ,” the little guy snaps back. “That ain’t allowed in this pen?”

“Not unless you got somethin’ to show for it at the end of it,” Rick goads him on.

But instead of making him start spilling details, that just makes the little guy’s jaw tighten and his eyes narrow.

“Hmph,” he says, and pointedly turns away, sitting with his back to Rick against the plastic cup wall with his arms crossed.

Probably glaring daggers at the far wall or something.

Dammit.

Rick just wanted to speed things up, but it looks like he just slowed everything way, way down.

Rick clears his throat. He feels tired, all of a sudden. Like he’s been pushing hard against something that wasn’t built to move. “Okay, we’re not getting very far, here.”

“No shit,” the little guy mutters to the floor of his cup.

Then they both fall into an awkward, long silence, and Rick eventually gives into the urge to rub a hand over his face in frustration. He’s fucked it up for the moment, and has no idea what to do next.

Then it hits him. Food.

Food will improve the situation. They’ll eat, feel a little less irritable, build some sort of silent camaraderie, and then hopefully the little guy will feel like he can start to talk.

Rick stands up and goes about cooking breakfast on the stove. He breaks a few eggs, makes a few omelets, and chows down. For all that Rick was stressed and strung out over playing extreme Real or Unreal, eating does end up making him feel a lot better. Calmer. Saner, in a manner of speaking. He washes his dishes and wonders what he can give the little guy to eat.

Rick rummages through his cabinet and eventually decides on half a handful of Honey Nut Cheerios. He lets them drop into the cup one or two at a time.

The little guy seems surprised at first, but grabs a Cheerio and chows down like he’s starving a second later.

Looks like Rick chose wisely. Little guy _loves_ the Cheerios.

-

Little guy also loves the scrap of chicken Rick gives him for lunch.

When it comes to the little guy’s food, at least, Rick thinks, he can do no wrong.

Of course, the little guy still complains when Rick decides to upgrade prison containment measures after one too many failed escape attempts. One of them even almost got past him, which. Can’t have that.

Rick uses a sharp screwdriver to painstakingly poke small holes just under the rim of the cup, then strings twine through them. He ties the twine together into one overhanging knot before tying the end line to the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

No way can the little guy get out of that.

Satisfied, Rick goes upstairs to crash on his excuse of a bed. He basically hasn’t slept since the little guy woke him up battling a snake, and it’s caught up with him.

It rains while he sleeps, and his dreams follow the rhythm of the raindrops.

-

When he finally wakes up, Rick makes dinner.

Well, actually, he just throws a frozen pizza in and sets the timer, but. Details.

He cuts out a square half-inch of pizza, covered with exactly one-fourth a piece of pepperoni, and sends it down into the cup for his prisoner.

Rick had thought the chicken was a hit, but man. The little guy goes _bananas_ for the pizza.

-

The sun goes down. Rick watches it fall past the horizon from his kitchen table while drinking a beer. The little guy is drinking, too. Rick’d poured some drops of beer into his bottle cap and given it to him. The look on the guy’s face was pure bliss at the first sip.

Rick thinks nine hours is more than long enough to try talking to each other again.

This time, he’s gonna start off on a different foot. One that assumes the little guy is real. Unthreatening. His own person.

Speaking of which…

“What’s your name?” Rick asks.

The little guy starts, blinks up at him.

“Your name,” Rick repeats gently.

“Oh. Uh, Daryl.” The little guy shrugs a little self-consciously. “Daryl Dixon.”

“Daryl Dixon,” Rick echoes. Doesn’t seem like a name Rick’s brain would come up with. He’s not quite that imaginative; it almost sounds like a character name from a book. Catchy. Easy to remember. “My name’s Rick Grimes, but seems like you already knew that.”

Daryl Dixon nods.

Rick sets down his empty beer bottle on the table with a clink. “So. We gotta have a talk. Don’t want it happenin’ like last time, though. Let’s do this more... rational. Not an interrogation, or an argument, or anything. Let’s say it’s more of a discussion. That sound alright to you, Dixon?”

Daryl Dixon grunts like it doesn’t matter to him either way.

Well, neutrality is a sight better than noncompliance. Rick nods back. “Good. Good.”

He studies Daryl Dixon for a long, long moment.

“Tell me something I couldn’t know,” Rick says at last. “Something I can check.”

Daryl Dixon rubs his hands on the sides of his legs and swallows. Definitely nervous. But that’s not uncommon, when someone wants to prove something to the person across the table.

“Got a brother, Merle. Been arrested couple times before. Can probably look him up on a database or somethin’.”

Rick figured Dixon would try something like that. It’s exactly the sort of thing Rick would say in his place.

Which… doesn’t make Rick all that sure that Daryl Dixon _isn’t_ a piece of Rick’s crazy brain talking to himself.

But Daryl Dixon’s not done yet.

“And, and this ’s a goddamn fact. Best bet for digging up morel mushrooms, the ones that look like sponges, find a dead elm with the bark peelin’ off. There’ll be whole patches ‘round it. Could feed you for a couple days, easy.”

Mushrooms? More-elle mushrooms? Rick cocks his head to the side, confused. He’s never heard of those.

Dixon doesn’t stop to elaborate, though. He just keeps on trucking.

“Once I seen a deer jump an eight-foot fence, tryna get away. Whitetail. Almost 300 pounds, but the bastard cleared it with a couple inches to spare. Even with an arrow in its gut. And, uh... the Tufted Titmouse, it’s birdcall is like – ” Daryl Dixon whistles three short, high bursts. “ – that.”

He looks up at Rick hopefully.

Rick stares back, flabbergasted.

Daryl’s brow creases. He opens his mouth like he’s going to keep going, though, so Rick jumps in.

“Right, okay, I gotta check all that stuff out,” Rick says hastily, even though he has no idea how the fuck he’s going to be able to find out what a Tufted Titmouse sounds like. Maybe on Youtube? Google? “Later. I’ll check it out later. Why don’t we just.” He makes a vague gesture. “Move on, for now.”

“Okay.” Daryl settles back down in his cup.

“You wanna tell me how you know all that stuff ‘bout me? My name, the smiling man, all that?”

Daryl tries to look innocent, a little ‘who, me?’ look. Rick doesn’t fall for it for a second, so Dixon drops it and sighs. “Fine. I been living here in your kitchen for a couple months. Under the sink, over there.” He gestures over to the kitchen sink. “Overheard your phone call with that Shane guy. Heard about you seein’ the smiling man, so. Figured I needed to know more. Followed you to work the other day in your belt, saw more ‘n I bargained for.”

Rick frowns. “Came to work with... Wait, which day did you – ” Then he stills. _The_ day? As in, the day Rick stumbled on a murder victim? “Did you – Jenner?”

Daryl nods. “Yeah,” he says heavily.

Rick rubs at his face. “Jesus.”

He stands up and stalks over to the fridge, muttering, “I need another goddamn beer.” He pops the top off and carefully fills it up for Daryl.

Once they’ve had a minute to drink and Rick’s had a minute to absorb everything, he starts again.

“So. Last night.”

Daryl raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, I know you know _something,_ ” Rick wheedles.

Daryl huffs. “You gonna believe me this time?”

Rick hesitates. He can’t say whether or not he will until he’s heard the evidence, but… he can try to keep an open mind to the best of his ability. “I’ll try,” he promises.

Daryl deflates from his defensive, prickly posture, and Rick thinks Daryl might just trust him.

“A’right. Fire away.”

Rick frowns and drums his fingers against the tabletop. Finally, he asks, “How’d you know that’d happen?”

Daryl looks up at him. There’s a crease between his eyebrows.

“How’d you know he’d be out there in the yard,” Rick amends. “Said earlier that he was probably out there, waitin’ for me. How’d you guess?”

The crease disappears. Daryl shrugs. “Figured he would be, after last night.”

Rick narrows his eyes. “Really.”

Daryl narrows his eyes right back. “ _Really_.”

Rick runs a hand through his hair. He’s tired of getting stuck here, in some sort of cold war. Feels like he’s been here so many times with so many different people, it’s wearing on him. His own personal purgatory. “Okay. Fine. So... _assuming_ you’re real _and_ telling the truth to the best of your ability... you saw him last night?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

Daryl gestures over at the kitchen window. “Through there.”

“No, I meant – ” Rick shakes his head and pinches his nose. “Okay. So you can get up on the counter. Somehow. All right. I meant... How can you see him, too? Nobody else can.”

Daryl shrugs uncomfortably. “Always had good eyes. ‘Specially when it comes to lookin’ out for danger. Ain’t ever seen nothing like that before, though. You know.” He wiggles his fingers. “That weird shit.”

Rick chuckles brokenly. _That weird shit_. “I do know.”

“Yeah, and this freak, he...” Daryl runs a hand over his shoulder. “Well, he tried to off me. Shrunk me, tried catchin’ me, and then sent a fuckin’ mountain lion after my sorry ass to finish me off when he couldn’t use me.”

“ _Use_ you?” Rick echoes.

“Wanted my eyes, I think. Kept saying he’d cut ‘em out, that they were perfect for his, uh, masterpiece, or something.”

“He – your _eyes_?” Rick asks sharply. “You said, he wanted your _eyes_?”

Daryl blinks rapidly.

“Yeah?” Daryl says uncertainly. “Went after ‘em with his knife, barely made it out alive. Got lucky.” He shows Rick his shoulder where the knife had supposedly hit instead. The scar is nasty, looks like the cut went almost completely through.  

“Looks deep.”

“Yeah, had worse,” Daryl dismisses. “Healed over pretty fast, too.”

“Hmm,” Rick says noncommittally, wondering how bad worse can get than a _stab wound_ from a _serial killer_.

Daryl narrows his eyes. “Why you so _interested_ in it bein’ after my baby blues, huh?”

Rick hesitates for a second, thinking about the empty, bloody sockets of Pete Dolgan. It’s classified, but. Hell. Nothing to lose, talking about case details to Daryl. Either he’s talking to a tiny man who can’t exist, or he’s talking to a figment of himself. Either way, nothing lost.

“Case,” Rick admits. “Male murdered in a basement, both eyes missing. Previous signs of paranoia, little to no evidence of anyone else in the room, locked doors and windows. Only happened three days ago, now.”

Daryl absorbs that.

“Sounds like the smiling man to me,” Daryl offers. “Must’ve finally gotten the eyes for his, uh. Whatever project he’s working on.”

“Hmm, okay, a project,” Rick thinks out loud. “So whatever he is, whatever he’s working on, he’s selectively collecting body parts to do it. Profile must be similar to a trophy serial killer. So we can be fairly sure that he’s not disposing of them, but memorializing them. He’s choosing each victim’s body parts for very specific reasons, probably that have to do with his idea of perfection. Prizes he’s won. And...”

“Putting them together?” Daryl offers a little too casually. “Like Frankenstein.”

Rick peers down at him. “Yeah, like Frankenstein,” he says. “And I’m assuming you knew that it’s not the first time that _that’s_ been brought up in the past couple days about these cases.”

Daryl shrugs.

Well, Daryl _had_ said he’d followed him to work. Guess it’d make sense that he overheard Martinez’ statement, or the recording of the phone call. Or both. Rick moves on. “Right. So, to sum up, right now, I’ve got a magical serial killer stalking me outside my house. Wanting to cut me apart and use my body parts for his... monster.”

Daryl nods. “Far as I can figure, yeah.”

Rick stares at him. Daryl’s pretty unruffled by all this. Maybe it’s because he’s had more time to adjust, maybe it’s because he’s literally physically altered in an impossible way, but Rick’s pretty off-kilter, here. He’s been a cop for years, heard a ton of crazy shit, dealt with the weird side of humanity before, but _this…_ this isn’t something his psyche can just accept like that, off the cuff. “You know how crazy this sounds? Do you have _any_ idea – Daryl, this is never gonna get any traction with the department.”

“Well, yeah,” Daryl scoffs. “They’re never gonna get with the program. They’re not the lucky sons of bitches who went and got cursed. _We_ are.”

Rick blinks.

Rewinds. Plays back. Rewinds again. Plays back again.

Cursed?

Cursed.

_Cursed._

Rick’s been… cursed. Daryl, too.

Cursed… So, Daryl’s been cursed into a tiny body. Rick’s been… what, cursed into being a target? Being tracked? He’s got some magical tracker on him? Or maybe he’s just being followed?

Okay.

Cursed.

Rick’s… cursed.

Okay. Okay.

So, to recap, Rick’s whole understanding of the world’s been turned upside down, probably from the second Daryl started talking about some goddamn mushrooms Rick’s never heard of, and magic is somehow real. And he somehow sees it. And, somehow, he has gotten cursed without knowing it by a magical serial killer.

Rick is cursed.

Alright.

So, Rick ain’t exactly an expert, but he’s seen the movies. If there’s a magical curse, there must be some magical way to break it.

“So, what do we do?” Rick asks.

Daryl doesn’t have to think about his answer for very long.

“Hunt it. Before it hunts us.”

-

That night, Rick goes on his phone and youtubes Tufted Titmouses. Googles facts about whitetail deer. Looks at images of more elle (autocorrected to morel) mushrooms.

It all adds up.

There’s even a shitty Facebook page for a certain Merle Dixon. White, late thirties or early forties. Redneck, from way down south in Georgia. Rides a motorcycle. Page isn’t updated very often.

Logically, and Rick’s always been a logical man, Daryl is telling him the truth.

About everything.

And with two confirmed murders in town, Rick doesn’t really have a choice not to believe in the smiling man.

If he’s crazy, he’s crazy. But right now, Rick believes that Daryl real, and so is the smiling man.

And he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do something about it all.

-

The next morning, Daryl goes into Rick’s left breast pocket.

Turns out he’d been hiding in one of Rick’s belt pouches the other day, which, to Rick, seems like it must’ve been pretty damn uncomfortable. Daryl just shrugs when he asks, says, “Weren’t nuthin’,” and moves on.

But yeah, Rick walks into the police station with an odd little weight in his shirt. He feels almost like he’s wearing a spy camera - he knows Daryl can see through the eyehole in the button just fine, and is eating everything up with the determination not to miss a thing.

Rick tries to put it out of his mind to interact normally enough with Martinez at the front desk, and mostly succeeds.

“Morning, Grimes.”

“Morning, Martinez.”

Martinez frowns. “You s’posed to be back here so soon, bro? Thought you were takin’ off a couple days.”

“I was,” Rick agrees. Oops. A little-slip up. Rick would be all over that in a heartbeat if a suspect in an interrogation room had slipped into past tense like that. “I mean, I still am. Just wanted to check in, report to Morgan, talk with Harrison. That kind of thing.”

Martinez shrugs. Good. Seems like Rick covered it up well enough. “Okay, but you should know, _hermano_ , he’s so pissed he breathing fire. Getting’ shit from the mayor and all them other schmoozing fuckers since yesterday.”

“I figured.” That always happens when a violent, high-profile case or two pop up in the public radar. And that’s not even counting the mire of shit going on with Rick that Morgan has to deal with. He pushes away the twinge of guilt at that thought. There’s no time for that.

He heads for Morgan’s office, doesn’t even bother knocking, and shuts the door behind him with a muted click.

“Sheriff,” Rick says, very professionally.

“Deputy,” Morgan shoots right back, just as professionally. He’s standing behind his desk, facing the window. The same window that Rick’d shot a few days ago, seemingly unprovoked.

The spiderweb cracks are still there in the glass, visible even though the blinds are down. Rick wonders if Morgan’d been staring at them.

(He had been.)

Morgan turns around, and his face is tight. Eyes are scrutinizing. Mouth is set. Rick knows that he’d gotten by Martinez pretty easily because Martinez didn’t care enough or suspect enough to look at him too closely; but he also knows that Morgan can catch lies easy as looking at you, and that right now, Morgan’s bullshit detector is dialed all the way up.

“Thought you were supposed to be off work, Officer. I talked to Doctor Greene, or should I say he talked to me.”

Loopholes. Think loopholes. He’s not on work, he’s… between work. “Yeah, well, it’s a free country, sir, and I’m not here to take up a shift. I’m here to finish up some loose ends before I go on vacation.”

“Which ends?” Morgan asks suspiciously.

Rick’s thought about his answer to this on the whole drive into town, so thank goodness, his tongue rolls it out easily enough. “Progress reports, profiles, theories I got on all my currents. Gotta talk to Harrison, too. She wanted some help, and I’m transferring most of my caseload to her. Seemed like the right thing to do, give her some pointers on what I got goin’ on.”

Morgan’s eyes narrow. “And after I let you fly by today, you’ll stay out of the precinct for good ‘til you’re cleared by Greene. Cold turkey. Right?”

“Right,” Rick agrees. Shouldn’t need more than a day to get what little they can to help crack this crazy magic-filled case, anyway. “Just today. I got a lot of cases, sir. It wouldn’t be fair to push all that work on to the team with no notice.”

“Hmmm.” Morgan considers him. Rick tries to look as compliant and team-oriented as possible, and in no way thinking of disregarding a doctor’s and a superior’s orders. “Done. If I see a goddamn _molecule_ of you in this precinct starting tomorrow, I will suspend your ass for so long you’ll forget how to recite your fucking Miranda rights.”

“10-4.” Rick tips his hat and gets out of there before Morgan can even think about changing his mind.

He heads to his desk and starts whittling down paperwork from his inbox into his outbox. Gotta actually do some grunt work that’ll help Andrea later in the week, or his alibi for being here won’t hold up under Morgan’s watchful eye.

-

Almost two hours later, Rick sneaks off to the copy room. He does make a few duplicates that Harrison will need later, like some of his handwritten notes and sketches of the scene, but that doesn’t take long at all.

Looking around furtively, even though he knows nobody else is there to see him, Rick scans all the files on the Jenner case he has, and emails them to his personal address. Rick doesn’t think anyone is gonna check the printer’s history and find out that he sent himself copies of a classified casefile, but just in case, he deletes it.

With his heart still beating fast - all this sneaking around and covering his tracks like a perp is kind of exciting, but also kind of anxiety-inducing - Rick tucks his head down and mutters to his pocket, “Sorry, job’s always slow-moving. Gonna get us all the evidence we need to look over, bring it home. Then we can talk to Harrison and get out of here and over to Jenner’s place for scoping.”

“Okay,” Daryl whispers back immediately, quieter than anything.

The soft trust in Daryl’s calm voice makes Rick smile a little as he walks back into the bullpen. It’s nice, having someone take you at your word and trust you to do things right. He hasn’t had that in his personal life for a long time, and he likes it. It’s refreshing.

Rick shoves the copies into manila folders and puts them in piles on his desk. “Andrea?” he calls in her desk’s direction.

Nothing.

Maybe Andrea is out and about.

(Or maybe she’s been _taken_ out.)

Rick grabs his radio. “Harrison, this is Grimes. You copy?”

There’s no response, but Rick hears an echo of his own voice from across the pen. Okay. Not out and about, then.

“Andrea?” He walks over, and there Andrea is, sleeping in a crumpled uniform with her forehead pressing into a stack of file folders.

Or, she’d _been_ sleeping. Now, she’s glaring up at Rick with the eyes of the terminally underslept. The terrifying effect is a little diminished by her cheek still smooshing into the desk, though. Rick is almost viscerally reminded of trying to wake Carl up in the morning for school.

“Must’ve been here all night, working on them cases,” Rick says softly. “Sorry, I’ll just come back later.”

She grunts. “S’fine. What.”

Rick shows her two pictures, one from the Pete Dolgan crime scene, one from the Jenner scene. Both have cameras - Dolgan’s is a dusty old wind-up Kodak on the floor, Jenner’s is a newer digital security camera sitting pretty in a ceiling corner.

“Another camera,” Harrison breathes. “What did the tapes show?”

“Nothing,” Rick says. “Overexposed, just like your film camera. All the footage was just – white static.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. But even more interesting than that?” Rick leans in, and his voice goes quiet. “Andrea, this security footage was _digital_.”

Harrison blinks. “What?”

“I went through the specs, downloaded the footage from its local drive. There was no film in that camera. It was taped live on miniDV and automatically transferred to digital files on the server. But the entire image is whited out with static, just like your film camera, before there was any time for it to overdevelop. Just. Wiped. Right after Jenner bursts inside.”

Harrison looks thunderstruck. “Rick, what the. What does that even _mean_ , what are we – who are we – what the hell kind of _equipment_ , who the hell are we even _chasing_?”

“I have my theories.” Theories that I can’t breathe a word about, else I get thrown in the loony bin, Rick thinks a little bitterly to himself. Hopefully Andrea won’t demand to know them before helping, or they’re fucked.

“But no proof,” Harrison fills in with a sigh. “Yeah, been there. So,” her eyes dart around the station behind him, and her voice is barely even audible now. “What do you need?”

Rick hesitates.

“Rick. You’ve got a hunch, but you’ve been benched. You need help from inside the station to track this son of a bitch down. So tell me. _What do you need_?”

Rick takes a deep breath, suddenly feeling the heat and weight of Daryl sitting in his pocket a little more keenly. This is a risk, one that could get the both of them fired if they get caught. But he has to ask. “Access.”

Officer Harrison nods, and there’s a steely glint in her eye. “You got it.”

-

Rick unlocks the door to Jenner’s apartment, one floor up from the liquor store crime scene downstairs. It’s in disrepair; the orange wallpaper is moldy and peeling, and Rick can tell it hasn’t been cleaned in weeks, maybe even months. But there is one thing that stands out.

The conspiracy theory web pinned up on the walls.

There are photos, rudimentary drawings, scribbled shorthand, and strings connecting everything together. It would look like the skeleton of a think board in a detective’s office, if it weren’t so shabby.

Rick’s done a lot of cases in his time, and he has to say - this is probably the best thing to find to figure out what a victim was thinking before they were killed. Even better than a diary. Whatever Jenner had going on, this conspiracy web is going to have to be the key to finding out what.

In fact…

It might just answer the question Rick has about the overexposed film.

“Daryl, you seein’ this?” Rick asks.

“Yeah,” Daryl answers. “Just don’t know what the hell to make of it yet.”

Rick snorts. “Mhm.” He studies a battery in a ziploc bag tacked to the wall. “Looks like Jenner really was on to something,” he comments.

“Seriously?” Daryl looks up at Rick through the open flap of the pocket, with such a disbelieving  face that Rick has to chuckle. “You’re fucking with me. Dude’s a space case.”

Rick shakes his head. “I know what it looks like, but I’ve done this kind of thing before. He’s paranoid and probably too smart for his own good. He made it look like this on purpose; there’s a pattern, if you know how to look for it.”

Daryl takes a closer look. It’s pretty clear from his face that everything in front of him just confirms to him that Jenner was crazy as a loon. “Wow,” he says blankly. “Okay. You wanna explain this, Einstein?”

So Rick shows him what’s he’s thinking. He points to a picture of a scribble, which has the used AA battery pinned to it. “See this battery? It’s attached to this sketch of... uh... squiggly lines.” He points to the chicken scratch on an index card, two strings over. “And this? This says HSO4– in the corner here.”

“Code?” guesses Daryl.

“No, high school chemistry,” Rick says. “Hydrogen sulfate, actually. You know what that’s used for?”

Daryl shakes his head.

“Film development,” Rick says smugly. “Exposing photographs. Or, in this case, overexposing them.”

“Like the camera, and the security footage,” Daryl says thoughtfully.

“Exactly.”

“Is the battery – ?”

“No, batteries are usually made with hydrogen sulfide, not sulfate. Different.”

Daryl frowns. “Then what does the battery mean?”

“My guess?” Rick ticks his head to the side. “It means whatever the smiling man is, he probably runs on hydrogen sulfate. Or maybe he emits it, not sure. I don’t think Jenner was sure, either.”

“Huh. Like, so, it’s part of his magic?” Daryl asks. “So when he showed up at the crime scenes, his aura automatically wiped out all the cameras. I guess that makes sense. Why’s the squiggle drawing connected to the forest floor picture over there, though?”

Rick hums. “Maybe Jenner saw the smiling man there, or maybe he found traces of sulfate. Either way, I think it’s the place he tracked it and found something out.”

“Tracked, huh,” Daryl says in a funny voice. Rick glances at him, but Daryl almost looks pleased at that. “Good. We find out what kind of footprints Jenner was following, I can get us there, easy.”

“Before that, though,” Rick says speculatively, fingering his silver dime bracelet, thinking about cadet training on defense and always being prepared for the worst. “Why don’t we make another stop.”

Daryl shrugs. “Sure.”

-

Rick takes them to the courthouse and walks up to Sasha’s office. He has no trouble finding it this time. He knocks on the doorframe.

“It’s open,” Sasha calls from inside.

Rick opens the door and goes in. “Sasha,” he says politely.

“Rick,” Sasha replies, typing on her computer just to finish her last sentence before looking up at him. “You need something?”

He asks her where to find Bob Stookey. She frowns, but says he’s got a job at T’s Diner and room 312 in the homeless shelter. So probably one or the other.

He thanks her, and takes his leave.

“Who was she?” Daryl asks from his pocket.

“Lawyer. Best one in town. Also basically runs the homeless shelter’s administrative side. Running for District Attorney next year, or so I hear,” Rick answers as he heads next door to the shelter.

Daryl hums, but doesn’t ask any more questions.  

-

Rick goes up the marble stairs to the third floor, skimming his fingers over the smooth brass banister the whole way up. He walks down the hall to 312, and knocks on the door.

“Hello, Mr. Stookey? This is Officer Rick Grimes.”

There’s a pause, and the door swings open.

“Officer Grimes!” an energetic Bob Stookey says. “Come in, come in – I see that this town takes care of its people pretty well, huh?”

“They do,” Rick agrees, stepping past the threshold. “You’ll fit right in.”

Bob smiles. “Seems that way, so far. So! What can I do you for, officer?”

Rick hesitates, and then slides the hemp bracelet off his wrist. “I, uh. Wanted to give this back to you ‘fore I forgot.”

Bob Stookey’s face falls into something more serious as his eyes catch on the dirty, ashy faces of his two silver coins. He gingerly takes it from Rick’s hand, careful not to touch the ash, and studies it up close.

“Sorry, I couldn’t figure how to clean that black stuff,” Rick apologizes. “Wouldn’t come off.”

“No, it wouldn’t, would it,” Bob mutters, almost to himself. “Needs... hmm...”

Bob wanders off to the kitchen. Rick follows a little gingerly, feeling like an intruder, but Bob doesn’t seem to care.

Bob is mixing together some stuff into a small bowl. Salt, powdered roots, clear water, and bits of leaves. Rick stares at the contents of the bowl a little dubiously, but then the concoction blooms into a bright blue glow. Which - holy hell.

Bob Stookey seems completely unruffled by the fact that he’s doing magic Rick _never thought possible outside of movies and comic books_ , and dips each of the silver coins into it. When the coins resurface, they’re as bright and clean as the day they were made.

Then Bob turns towards Rick and Daryl with his hands on his hips and an eerily knowing look in his eyes.

“Why don’t we sit down,” Bob says kindly, glancing down at Rick’s pocket. “All three of us. Looks like we have important things to talk about.”

That hits Rick like a kick to the sternum. He _knows_ about Daryl. How - ?

“Yeah,” Rick says weakly. “Sure.”

-

Bob Stookey, somehow knowing Rick Grimes needs it for emotional support, starts a pot of chamomile tea. Then he asks Rick and Daryl what they know.

Rick starts talking, and once he starts, it’s like he can’t stop. Not until the whole thing is laid out piece by piece over the thick red carpet. Daryl pipes in every once in awhile, but mostly, he lies back on his flower-patterned tea cozy and lets Rick do the talking while he sips his tea out of a shiny metal spoon Bob Stookey’d dug up for him.

Eventually, when everything has been dug up and presented to Stookey for evaluation and there’s nothing more to report, Rick thanks Bob for the dime bracelet and for his patient ear. Bob smiles and brushes off the thanks.

Then Rick asks how Bob can break their curses, and Bob Stookey’s face falls a little.

Bad sign.

The quiet stretches, making Rick’s foreboding feeling worse with every passing second.

“Nah, Rick, he can’t.” Daryl finally says quietly. “We gotta do it ourselves. Ain’t that right.”

“That’s right,” Bob Stookey agrees. “It’d be easier on y’all if I could, but. No. Ain’t no curse alive that I know of that can be broken by someone else. Gotta be you two, or it ain’t gonna stick. Could come right on back, soon as I’m gone.”

Shit.

“But,” Bob continues, and his eyes are twinkling. “Just because I can’t do it myself, that don’t mean I can’t give you some trade secrets.”

-

Trade secrets turn out to be vague supply lists.

Stookey’d pointed to Daryl and said, _Mirrors_. And something about bouncing the reflection back. Then he’d pointed to Rick and said, _Fire. Dry wood. Oil,_ mixed with the blue goop he’d given Rick. And something about, uh, smelling it before he sees it.

Luckily, Rick thinks as he and Daryl drive back to the house, they’ve got most all of that stuff in stock already.

-

That night, Rick throws everything together into a duffle bag. A lighter, matches, dry wood, gasoline, flashlights, water bottles, a small mirror. Everything except for the blue goop and oil, which he puts into the fridge to keep.

“It ain’t coleslaw, Rick. Ain’t gonna go bad on us,” Daryl says, just dubiously enough that Rick knows he’s not a hundred percent sure of that.

“You don’t know that. It could! Probably,” Rick says, just as dubiously. “Besides, I don’t want it stinkin’ up the place.”

“Whatever. What else we got to eat?” Daryl asks, already sounding bored of arguing over something neither of them know for sure. Rick silently agrees, and focuses on dinner instead.

Five minutes later, Rick is heating up leftover spaghetti, which actually tastes pretty damn good even a day or two later, if he does say so himself. Daryl certainly agrees, with the way he wolfs it down.

(He’s also pretty sure he sees Daryl sneakily wiping away some honest-to-god _tears_ at one point. He’s never been so proud of his own cooking.)

-

Daryl chooses the channel they watch on TV for the night. Rick smiles as he watches the little guy stomp on the remote buttons until he’s satisfied. Looks like he’s having a ball with it, the way his eyes are all lit up.

To Rick’s surprise, they end up on Planet Earth and learn all about the tide pools on the California coast. Daryl seems particularly taken with the hermit crabs, scuttling away from seagulls and other predators along the sand with tiny tenacity.

Rick guesses, with what he knows of how Daryl’s life’s been going lately, that Daryl can relate to the little guy burrowing into the sand with his little stubby crab legs a little too well.

“Didn’t figure you for a Planet Earth kinda guy,” Rick comments over David Attenborough telling them all about Malibu’s shallows and their inhabitants.

Daryl shrugs. “Ain’t really a TV guy. These couple months, they been the longest I stayed in a house.”

“Huh.” Rick thinks about the way Daryl’d flinched away in fear, back when he’d been in that plastic cup. And how Daryl had seemed at a loss when Rick’d asked him what he wanted to eat, or where he wanted to sleep...

He thinks about how Daryl’s life before this must have been. All signs are pointing to... not that great, and that’s an understatement.

And yet, here Daryl is, happy as a clam, watching mollusks breathe and swim around on Planet Earth. His eyes are shining, and seems as content as can be. Even though he’s been magicked into a tiny body and sent through the proverbial wringer at every turn, nearly murdered by some insane magical serial killer, he’s… unbothered. Calm. Whole.

(Adorable.)

A sudden wave of affection for the little guy wells up in Rick, so strong that he’s surprised at himself.

He hopes, after everything is over, that Daryl will get what he deserves - a long, happy life full of bowls of spaghetti and educational nature specials, with no suffering in sight.

(He hopes, just a little, that he’ll be there too, and able to make sure of it.)

-

They set off at the crack of dawn.

Rick has his duffle bag slung across his back, with his Colt in his holster and Daryl in his breast pocket. Daryl’s been tense and silent since they left the car parked on the side of a trail road, as deep as a vehicle can go into a dense forest like this.

 _Follow the reflection_ , Bob Stookey had said. Daryl seems to have found that part out all right - he says he sees a thin string of light shooting out of the mirror into the depths of the forest whenever the sun hits, always focused in the same direction.

Rick can’t see it - maybe it has to do with the angle, or the size, or something to do with the fact that it’s not his curse they’re following - but he believes Daryl sees it. He dutifully takes a left here and a right there, according to Daryl’s directions, and tries to stuff down the alarm bells going off in his brain the deeper they trek into the dark woods.

He steps into a glen, and Daryl sucks in a breath.

“This is where I almost got ganked again,” Daryl explains, hushed. “Mountain lion familiar. Hid in that log there, ‘til it lost the trail.”

Rick sees the mossy log he’s pointing at, small enough that a fat squirrel couldn’t fit its way in. Even with how tiny Daryl is, it would’ve been a tight fit. It’s less of a log and more of a… hollowed out branch.

“We must be gettin’ close, then,” Rick remarks. “How far d’you reckon you ran after you got shrunk?”

“Mile, maybe two. Then from here to yer place, ‘nuther couple miles.”

Okay. Rick takes a deep breath. Less than two miles. Okay. They’re almost there. Almost caught up to the smiling man with a knife. This is why they’re here. He fights down the spike of fear that stabs into his brain at the thought of willingly getting closer to that _thing_.

“Which way?” he asks.

Daryl points west. Rick closes his eyes for a moment, nods, and walks on.

The sun is rising higher into the sky behind them, lighting up the forest a little more with every step. The warmth on his back as it follows them gives Rick a bit of comfort, like the day is on their side. Watching over them. Rooting out the shadows.

And, in a way, it is.

He straightens his shoulders as they go, step by step, into the lion’s den.

-

When they pass the half-mile mark, Rick realizes he can see the string coming out of Daryl’s mirror, too. It’s thickening a little, right in front of his eyes - he can _see it_ growing.

He stares at it a little too long, and half-trips over a tree root for his trouble.

“Whoops,” Rick says apologetically as Daryl lurches around in his pocket. “Sorry.”

“Nah,” Daryl dismisses. “Ain’t no thang. Go ‘round this clump ‘a trees, here, an’ - ”

Daryl cuts off abruptly, sucking in a harsh breath.

Rick glances down at him, worried, and follows his gaze.

Lying on the roots of the nearest tree is a dried spatter of blood.

Rick steps closer, swerves around the tree, and keeps going, on the lookout for any more… signs.

“Look there.” Rick points out a line of three toes, with their painted blue toenails still attached, sitting in a bloody clump of leaves. “And there.” A tree across the way has a bloody fingernail embedded in the bark, scratch marks dug in deep all around it.

“See that bush?” Daryl says, hushed. Rick does; it’s a thicket, caught with locks of hair. The ends have bits of scalp still stuck to them.

“These look like remnants of the ones that broke out and made a run for it,” Rick remarks quietly. He gestures at a thin patch of dead grass with ten jagged, uneven rivets clawed into it. From what he can tell, someone was dragged backwards, and they were trying to find purchase to pull themselves away from their attacker.

“Was almost me,” whispers Daryl, quieter than anything.

Daryl looks to have gone as white as a sheet, and his eyes are glassy. Rick would even bet he’s broken out into a cold sweat. He’s about a second away from going into a full-on traumatic episode or panic attack, Rick can just tell. Neither sounds good to have, especially right now.

“Hey!” Rick says, catching and holding Daryl’s fearful eyes. “You know what they say about almost.”

Daryl’s face relaxes a little as he thinks about that. Takes a breath. “Yeah,” Daryl finally replies. “Only counts in horseshoes.”

Rick grins. “Right,” he says, nodding encouragingly. “Only counts in horseshoes.”

Daryl settles in his pocket. Rick keeps walking, following the string of light all by himself, now that he can see it well enough. Doesn’t talk, though. Gives Daryl some time to breathe, instead of pointing out other signs, like the eyeball lolling on an incline, or the chunk of flesh some ants are hilling over.

-

When the sun’s all the way up, they’ve passed another mile of strewn body parts and corpses. The farther they’ve gone, the bigger the pieces - legs, heads, entire bodies, instead of just a few toes, or an ear. There’s almost more dead on the ground than there are cleared patches of dirt or grass for Rick to walk on.

He stumbles a few times over, and gets some blood on his boots. He can’t keep his eyes off the ground anymore, for fear of tripping again.

Rick steps over a mottled, maggoty torso that’s been torn open, but slips in a clotted puddle of blood behind it that’s so dark it looks like dirt. Daryl’s body thumps against his chest, wheezing out a curse of pain.

“Sorry, didn’t see that. You okay?”

“Fine,” Daryl forces out unconvincingly. “‘M fine.”

Yeah, right. Rick’s pretty sure Daryl’s still hurting from his ribs. He feels a stab of guilt about it again, but doesn’t press it. Daryl’s fine enough to make his own choices, whether or not he’s hurting.

-

Bob Stookey’d said a lot of vague things to Rick about fighting off his curse. Oil. Fire. But one particularly weird thing - _specific_ thing - he’d said... was that Rick would _smell it before he saw it_.

Rick had wondered what he would smell, and what it’d smell like. He’d wondered if he’d even know it when he’d found it.

Welp.

He’s found it.

Rick covers his nose and mouth when the full stench hits. It even makes his eyes water, it’s so strong. Worse than sulfur, worse than formaldehyde. Worse than anything he’s ever smelled, to be honest, and he can’t even pinpoint what it is.

He steps into a clearing, and stops in his tracks.

There’s a run-down shack, probably used to be some sort of handmade cabin. There’s not much of a yard, but what room does circle around it is filled with stacks of corpses, thrown together in piles like they’re firewood. The corpses are all rotting in different stages of decay. He can see maggots eating through flesh, and see the eyeballs falling out of their sockets.

(Well, out of the corpses that still _have_ eyes. Some of them have been ripped out of the skulls.)

Rick draws his Colt from his holster, holding it with both hands and pointing it at the ground, and carefully circles around the shack. Nothing moves that he can see, not for the whole 360 degrees.

The gold string of light from the mirror is pointing directly into the shack, disappearing right into the peeling paint.

He’s - it’s - inside. There’s no doubt.

This is it. The moment before everything goes to hell.

Rick meets eyes with Daryl, who nods. Rick nods back, and sets his jaw.

Here goes nothing.

Rick takes a silent step onto one of the mossy, old porch steps. Then another. Then he’s creeping along the front porch, trying not to let a single creak out of the planks, when -

_Shunk!_

A hand that’s more bone than flesh shoots out of the floorboards and clamps down on his ankle.

“Fuck!” Rick kicks back at it, but it won’t budge. He tries to leverage his body, try to force it to let go, but before he can, another hand breaks through the wood and grabs his other ankle.

Rick’s eyes widen as he watches another hand, and another, and another, and another all break through the wood to grab at him blindly.

He struggles even more now, aware that panic is rising in his mind and trying to take over where reason left off.

“Rick!” Daryl shouts in his reedy voice, wrenching himself out of Rick’s pocket and climbing down his pant leg by the seam, hand over hand. He takes out his knife and stabs at the dead hands, cutting tendons and trying to lop off thumbs. It helps, Rick gets a leg free, but right then -

Well.

Right then, the shack’s door creaks open.

And yeah.

There it (he?) is. Smiling, as always.

Rick’s frozen in place.

“Your brain,” it says to Rick. Its voice is hoarse, like it hasn’t seen use in a while. Reedy and off-key, like it hasn’t been taught how to speak naturally. “Yes, your _brain_ – it’s perfect, just what we need, yes, perfect, _perfect_ , yes, _yes_ – ”

It raises its knife, beginning to laugh in awkward unnatural spurts of hysteria, and shifts towards Rick with a hungry, intent look in his eyes. It almost seems like it’s staring directly into Rick’s skull, right through the bone and at the brain beneath.

(It is.)

Rick feels the dead hands converging on his frozen ankles, feels them creeping up his legs, but his eyes are stuck on the smiling man and his knife, coming closer, and he can’t move, he can’t -

Then Daryl roars out some garbled, wordless battle-cry, and hurls his small body like a cannon, dropping his mirror and stabbing his hunting knife right into the smiling man’s thigh.

Rick has a feeling that if it were just a regular knife, it wouldn’t do much against this magical smiling man. But… Since they treated their weapons before they left with Bob Stookey’s blue goop… it seems to do a good job. Smoke is hissing out the wound as it reels backwards from the agony. It’s a dark black smoke, and it smells about as worse as the stench they’d caught walking in here.

Rick’s gun comes up automatically, pointed dead center at the thing’s head as it screams to high heaven.

“Rick, the gasoline!” Daryl shouts. “Burn those off!”

Oh. Oh, yeah.

Dead grasping hands.

Priorities.

Rick zips open the duffle bag with one hand and pulls out the tank of gasoline. He douses the hands grasping his legs - well, their arms, he doesn’t want to burn himself - drops the tank, and fumbles for the lighter. He flicks it a few times, gets a flame going, and tosses it onto the gasoline just as he throws his entire body backwards.

He hits the dead grass as the lighter hits the gasoline.

The dead limbs catch easier than dry leaves, and burn up even faster. The skin melts off the bone, bubbling and popping like burning plastic, and by the time Rick’s kicked off the remaining grasping fingers from his legs, there’s a blackened hole in the porch with inanimate, charred bones sitting in the center.

Rick’s damned lucky he didn’t catch on fire, too. His pants might be a little ashy, but that’s the worst of it. It burned up so fast, it didn’t have time to catch anything else on fire before it died except for some unlucky patches of dry, yellowed grass.

Thank god.

He glances up where his gun is still pointed, but nope - smiling man’s not on the front porch anymore. Apparently, whatever damage the blue goop does, it doesn’t last too long. Not even a full minute before it’s zipping around again, faster than the eye can see. Just like Bob Stookey had said, but… Rick wasn’t expecting it to heal quite _that_ quick.

“Shhhiiiit,” Daryl mutters off the to side.

Rick sits up. “Already?” he asks. “Bob was right, that was fast.”

Daryl wordlessly hands him the lighter he’d tossed into the gasoline. Well, heaves it up with his entire upper body, seeing as the lighter must be half his body weight. He thanks him, and tucks it into his pocket.

Then Rick sees a glint in the dead grass, and picks up the mirror Daryl dropped. “Thought you might need this,” he says jokingly as he holds it out to Daryl.

“Thanks,” Daryl mutters, staring at his own reflection.

“Sure.” Rick rolls onto his feet and grabs the gas tank. It’s still probably three-quarters full. “Think we got his attention?”

Daryl snorts. “That’s fer damn sure.”

Rick lays his hand near the ground, where Daryl clambers up onto it and hugs both arms around Rick’s thumb. Rick carefully puts him back into his breast pocket.

“Here’s the plan,” Rick says, trying to sound a little more together than he currently is. “I guard the perimeter, fend him off, and you work on catchin’ him in the mirror.”

“A’right,” Daryl agrees immediately.

Rick stays in place, gun out and cocked, and swivels on the same spot in a slow, steady circle. He keeps his eyes on the cluster of trees around them, where the smiling man must’ve ran while they took their eyes off him. It’d be the best vantage point for a surprise attack, giving him the ability to come at them from any angle of the circle.

“Nine o’clock!” Daryl shouts, and Rick swings around to nine and shoots the smiling man dead center in the forehead. Somehow, it got ten feet away from them without him noticing. This thing is fast.

Black smoke spurts from its forehead, now, and it shrieks again as it rears back.

“Okay, good,” Rick says. “Perimeter secured, for now. You got any idea how to break your curse with that thing?”

Daryl chews his lip and looks down. “No,” he admits reluctantly.

“We’ll figure it out together, then,” Rick reassures him, turning in careful circles on the lookout all the while. Let’s see, how would he prompt a witness… “What do you remember from when he got you?”

“I – I don’t remember much, I – ”

“That’s okay,” Rick says patiently. “What do you remember – the _last_ thing you remember – right before you started shrinking?”

“Fuck, um.” Daryl is quiet for a moment. “His eyes? Staring at me, I don’t – five o’clock!”

Rick swings to five o’clock. Sure enough, the smiling man is right there. Rick puts another bullet through his skull, this time through the cheekbone. “Secured. You’re doing great, Daryl, what else?”

Daryl falls silent again, thinking as hard as he can, no doubt. Rick lets him, and keeps a careful eye on any twitch of movement around them.

Finally, Daryl shoots up and exclaims, “I got it, I got it! Let ‘im get closer next time.”

Rick grins. Daryl really is the most adorable little guy he’s ever seen. “10-4.”

“He’s on our six. Careful,” Daryl replies.

“Roger that.” Rick is a second away from about-facing, but then his eyes catch on -

What the hell is that, a -

Jesus.

It’s a mountain lion.

Rick throws himself to the side, just out of the path of the charging mountain lion, and hits his shoulder hard as he skids a few feet in the dirt. Daryl falls out into the grass with his mirror, and looks to be alright from what Rick can see.

Good.

The mountain lion was going at full speed, so it scrabbles to a stop before it can change direction towards them. That gives Rick time enough to spring onto his feet and slam into the mountain lion before it can crunch Daryl up like a snack.

They go flying, wrestling until they crash into the ground. The mountain lion whelps like a kicked dog, which makes Rick feel a little guilty. He loves dogs.

But then the mountain lion tries to claw his face off, and that guilt is gone. Rick blocks the paw and pistol whips it across the jaw with enough force to knock a man unconscious. In this case, it’s just enough to make the mountain lion drop away and curl into itself with pain.

Rick staggers to his feet, aims, and, after a moment, puts a bullet through its head.

There a single moment of satisfaction - hey, he won, they’re still alive - before a murder of crows leaps out of the nearby trees and all sic on him at once with their sharp beaks and claws. They’re cawing like a goddamn mob, and going for his eyes.

Fuck.

Rick covers his eyes with an arm, and beats the crows back with the other. “I got this, Daryl,” he calls out to Daryl, who is already trying to dash over to help him despite the fact that the smiling man is sneaking up behind him. “You just focus on gettin’ _him_!”

Daryl turns around.

The smiling man begins to hiss little words at him, words Rick can’t hear over the caws of the crows trying to kill him. He curses, and beats them back, over and over. He wallops a few, gets enough space to let off a shot. A crow drops dead. There. One.

He grabs the neck of another, and squeezes until it’s not moving. Then he uses it as a shield for his eyes. Quickly, he puts his gun back into his holster and pulls out the machete he threw into the duffle bag on a whim - and damn, he’s glad he did, right about now.

He starts swinging, and the birds around him either shriek in pain or buffet themselves out of his reach. A few get some nasty cuts, some get beheaded, some get gutted, but after Rick’s switched to the machete, it only takes a few minutes to narrow the murder down to five or six crows.

“Come on, come on,” he mutters to himself as they all charge him at once. He slashes once, twice, and now there’s only three left. Few enough that Rick can use both hands.

He takes out his gun in one, and his machete in the other, and suddenly, there are no more crows.

Instead, he realizes a moment later, other little woodland creatures are taking their place. Squirrels, chipmunks, even _songbirds_ are coming out of the trees and attacking him.

Fuck. How many of these is Rick going to have to kill? He only has so many bullets.

He starts stomping on the chipmunks and squirrels, trying to crush their little bodies under his boots, but some still creep up his legs. Damn. He’s gonna have to get his rabies shots updated after this. He whacks them off with the butt of his gun, and cuts at the air with the machete as the songbirds attack. He feels unaccountably even more guilty than he did earlier - now he’s killing little squirrels and chipmunks? And bluebirds? If little Judy saw this, she’d cry and call him a monster. But he keeps on going - stomping, slashing, whacking. They drop dead, one after the other, much quicker than the crows.

When he kills the last squirrel - those things turn out to be much tougher and scarier than he’d thought they’d be - all that’s left are the raccoons.

Then there’s a bright burst of light, and screaming. Whatever is happening with Daryl and the smiling man, Rick hopes it’s good.

When the light dims, he sees the raccoons launch themselves at him.

Easy. Rick shoots them, one after the other. One, two.

He waits, after that. When nothing else runs at him, Rick spins around, casing the area. A moment passes, but no more animals come out of the forest to try to kill him.

Okay. No more familiars, then.

He turns to find Daryl and the smiling man.

To his surprise, Daryl’s lying there, full-sized. He’s probably only an inch or two shorter than Rick is, at most.

“Daryl!” Rick drops his machete and holsters his Colt as he runs over to him, over by the shack. “ _Daryl_! You okay?”

Daryl’s lips move, but no sound comes out.

“Daryl, are you - ”

Daryl’s arm comes up, trembling, and one finger points right behind Rick.

“Shit,” Rick swears, when he turns and sees a whole fucking army of the undead coming for him. The corpses that were stacked like firewood are all animated now, moving towards him as best they can. Most limp, some crawl.

Guess the smiling man is still around somewhere, controlling them. Changed tactics, it seems. Too many live familiars dead, Rick guesses.

Well. Whatever the reason, he’s got to fight them off. Even if there are, uh, a hundred or so of them.

Rick starts taking them down, one by one. He reloads a few times, shooting every single one he can right in the head, which seems to keep them down, and he runs for his machete. Once they get in too close, and they will, since he’s going to run out of bullets eventually, he’s gonna need it.

A guttural howl of pain comes from behind him - Daryl. Rick glances behind him, and Daryl has propped himself up on his elbows, and is sitting up.

He kills a few more of the undead, mostly with the machete this time, and backs up a little further from the crowd of them to get another glance in.

Now Daryl is somehow, painfully, agonizingly, dragging himself up to his feet. His whole body is in shakes and quivers, Rick can see it from here. What the hell is he doing to himself?

Then Daryl starts to fall, and Rick -

Rick lurches towards him to help, even though he should be focused on the zombie hoard trying to kill him.

Then Daryl hits the ground, the force of his weight all in his elbow.

There’s a sick crunch of bones.

Rick hopes it’s not Daryl’s arm that just broke.

He turns back to the undead, and, well -

There aren’t any undead anymore. Just the dead. There are only corpses on the ground, inanimate and rotting.

Huh.

Daryl must have - that crunch must have been the smiling man. But how -

Oh.

Oh. _Reflect it back at him._

Rick thinks Daryl might have somehow just shrunk the smiling man right back, and then crushed his skull into pulp with his elbow.

He grins, and dashes up to Daryl’s collapsed form.

“Daryl, hey!” He kneels down and brushes the hair out of Daryl’s face. Daryl is smiling back at him. “I think… I think we did it. We got ‘im. Somehow.”

But Daryl’s eyes have closed, and he’s not responding. The smile slips off his face, slowly.

Rick’s does too. “Daryl?” he asks, shaking his shoulder. “Daryl! You okay?”

No response.

There’s a sluggish pulse, when he checks for one. But it’s slow, and who the fuck knows what happens to you after you get unshrunk? Sounded pretty painful, from the screams Rick heard. There could be bad internal bleeding.

Looks like Rick needs to get Daryl to a hospital, stat.

And the car’s over four miles away.

Shit.

-

In the end, Rick ties Daryl’s hands together with some thin rope from the duffle bag and slings him over his back in a poor imitation of a piggy back ride. Then he gets to walking.

It takes him a good two hours to finally reach the car. Carrying dead weight after you’ve just had the fight of your life means a lot of forced rest. Especially when all your adrenaline’s gone down. His legs keep buckling under him, and he keeps stumbling over tree roots, bushes, and dismembered corpses.

(Later, when someone asks Rick what hell looks like, he’ll go quiet and think about that walk through the forest. He’ll shake his head and won’t say a word about it, but he’ll dream about it the night after.)

When he does finally make it, every muscle in his body is screaming. He has to collapse for a good ten minutes and just breathe before he can heave Daryl into the car and go.

He sends up a prayer. He doesn’t know what he’s praying for, exactly, or even who he’s praying to, but he knows he needs Daryl to make it through this alright.

He heads down the long country road towards town.

Towards the hospital.

-

The drive goes fast - lasts maybe twenty minutes, with how Rick guns the engine. Usually it'd have taken almost an hour from where they were. Rick thinks speed limits are for times when someone's _not_ headed to the emergency room, so he doesn't fret about it.

Besides, he thinks to himself wryly, he knows the sheriff around these parts.

-

He puts Daryl on his own insurance.

It takes some doing, since, well, Daryl doesn’t exactly have any legal identification on him, and isn’t in any system in the hospital’s network. And he isn’t related to Rick.

So, well. Rick improvises.

“We’re together,” he bluntly tells the lady who’s handling the paperwork. “He’s my partner.”

The lady blinks at him. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, right then, honey. I’ll… that makes things easier. I’ll get him right on your plan, don’t you worry.”

Rick nods, satisfied.

“So, Daryl Grimes?”

“Dixon,” he says. “Daryl Dixon. We haven’t got married just yet,” he says, and the woman blushes with a little smile.

“Aw, not yet?” she asks a little playfully. “What are y’all waitin’ for? It’s legal now, didn’t y’hear?”

“We did, we did. Jus’ gotta spring the question on ‘im sometime soon.”

“You are just precious. He’s just got to say yes,” she says, and finishes out the insurance paperwork. “Hope y’all have a wonderful wedding after he heals up.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Rick says sincerely, and takes the paperwork.

Looks like he’s a taken man again, all of a sudden.

-

Finally, they let Rick into Daryl’s hospital room.

He’s sleeping. They’ve got a saline drip going in his arm and a machine breathing for him.

They tell Rick that Daryl’s entire body has just gone through a dramatic shock that they can’t pinpoint the source of. It’s almost as if his whole body received blunt force trauma, or got torn apart by overexertion. He’s also dehydrated, with broken ribs, a broken finger or two, and a couple of nasty gashes.

“What can be done?” Rick asks desperately. “Can he make a full recovery?”

“Absolutely,” the doctor says. “He needs copious amounts of rest, nutrition, and physical therapy to rebuild his muscles. It will take months, but he will make a full recovery.”

“Thank you,” Rick chokes out, finally. “Thank you so much, doctor. Thank you.”

The doctor smiles at him, says you’re welcome, and leaves.

Rick sits there, watching Daryl’s chest rise and fall.

“Thank you,” he tells Daryl quietly, and sits back in his chair.

It's calming. So Rick sits there, looking. And with all this looking at him, well…

Well, Rick notices just how handsome Daryl is. His jaw, his fluttering eyelashes. His muscular arms. And even though he’s very masculine, manly, even, Rick still thinks what he thought when Daryl was tiny - that somehow, despite the scruff and frown, he’s absolutely _adorable._

Oh, shit, Rick thinks to himself, as he realizes what he’s thrown himself into. Daryl’s hot.

And the whole town is gonna think they’re an item by the time he wakes up.


End file.
